Scholasticism is the term given
to the theology of the Middle Ages. It forms a distinct body of speculation, as
do the works of the Fathers and the writings of the Reformers. The Fathers
worked in the quarries of Scripture and, in conflict with heresy, wrought out,
one by one, its teachings into dogmatic statements. The Schoolmen collected,
analyzed and systematized these dogmas and argued their reasonableness against
all conceivable objections. The Reformers, throwing off the yoke of human
authority, and disparaging the Schoolmen, returned to the fountain of
Scripture, and restated its truths.

The leading peculiarities of
Scholasticism are that it subjected the reason to Church authority and sought
to prove the dogmas of the Church independently by dialectics. As for the
Scriptures, the Schoolmen accepted their authority and show an extensive
acquaintance with their pages from Genesis to Revelation. With a rare
exception, like Abaelard, they also accepted implicitly the teaching of the
Fathers as accurately reflecting the Scriptures. A distinction was made by
Alexander of Hales and others between the Scriptures which were treated as
truth, veritas, and the teaching of the Fathers, which was treated as
authority, auctoritas.

It was not their concern to
search in the Scriptures for new truth or in any sense to reopen the
investigation of the Scriptures. The task they undertook was to confirm what
they had inherited. For this reason they made no original contributions to
exegesis and biblical theology. They did not pretend to have discovered any new
dogmas. They were purveyors of the dogma they had inherited from the Fathers.

It was the aim of the Schoolmen
to accomplish two things,—to reconcile dogma and reason, and to arrange the
doctrines of the Church in an orderly system called summa theologiae.
These systems, like our modern encyclopaedias, were intended to be exhaustive.
It is to the credit of the human mind that every serious problem in the domains
of religion and ethics was thus brought under the inspection of the intellect.
The Schoolmen, however, went to the extreme of introducing into their
discussions every imaginable question,—questions which, if answered, would do
no good except to satisfy a prurient curiosity. Anselm gives the best example
of treatises on distinct subjects, such as the existence of God, the necessity
of the Incarnation, and the fall of the devil. Peter the Lombard produced the
most clear, and Thomas Aquinas the most complete and finished systematic bodies
of divinity.

With intrepid confidence these
busy thinkers ventured upon the loftiest speculations, raised and answered all
sorts of doubts and ran every accepted dogma through a fiery ordeal to show its
invulnerable nature. They were the knights of theology, its Godfreys and
Tancreds. Philosophy with them was their handmaid,—ancilla,—dialectics
their sword and lance.

In a rigid dialectical
treatment, the doctrines of Christianity are in danger of losing their
freshness and vital power, and of being turned into a theological corpse. This
result was avoided in the case of the greatest of the mediaeval theologians by
their religious fervor. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura were men of
warm piety and, like Augustine, they combined with the metaphysical element a
mystical element, with the temper of speculation the habit of meditation and
prayer.

He is far from the truth who
imagines the mediaeval speculations to be mere spectacular balloonings, feats
of intellectual acrobatism. They were, on the contrary, serious studies pursued
with a solemn purpose. The Schoolmen were moved with a profound sense of the presence
of God and the sacrifice of the cross, and such treatments as the ethical
portions of Thomas Aquinas' writings show deep interest in the sphere of human
conduct. For this reason, as well as for the reason that they stand for the
theological literature of more than two centuries, these writings live, and no
doubt will continue to live.1312

Following Augustine, the
Schoolmen started with the principle that faith precedes knowledge—fides
praecedit intellectum. Or, as Anselm also put it, "I believe that I
may understand; I do not understand that I may believe" credo ut
intelligam, non intelligo ut credam. They quoted as proof text, Isa. 7:9.
"If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." Abaelard was an exception, and reversed the
order, making knowledge precede faith; but all arrived at the same result.
Revelation and reason, faith and science, theology and philosophy agree, for
they proceed from the one God who cannot contradict himself.

In addition to the interest
which attaches to Scholasticism as a distinct body of intellectual effort, is
its importance as the ruling theology in the Roman Catholic Church to this day.
Such dogmas as the treatment of heresy, the supremacy of the Church over the
State, the immaculate conception, and the seven sacraments, as stated by the
Schoolmen, are still binding, or at any rate, they have not been formally
renounced. Leo XIII. bore fresh witness to this when, in his encyclical of Aug.
4, 1879, he pronounced the theology of Thomas Aquinas the standard of Catholic
orthodoxy, and the safest guide of Christian philosophy in the battle of faith
with the scepticism of the nineteenth century.

The Scholastic systems, like all
the distinctive institutions and movements of the Middle Ages, were on an
imposing scale. The industry of their authors cannot fail to excite amazement.
Statement follows statement with tedious but consequential necessity and
precision until chapter is added to chapter and tome is piled upon tome, and
the subject has been looked at in every possible aspect and been exhausted.
Duns Scotus produced thirteen folio volumes, and perhaps died when he was only
thirty-four. The volumes of Albertus Magnus are still more extensive. These
theological systems are justly compared with the institution of the mediaeval
papacy, and the creations of Gothic architecture, imposing, massive, and
strongly buttressed. The papacy subjected all kingdoms to its divine authority.
Architecture made all materials and known mechanical arts tributary to worship.
The Schoolmen used all the forces of logic and philosophy to vindicate the
orthodox system of theology, but they used much wood and straw in their
constructions, as the sounder exegesis and more scriptural theology of the
Reformers and these later days have shown.

§ 96. Sources and Development of Scholasticism.

The chief feeders of
Scholasticism were the writings of Augustine and Aristotle. The former
furnished the matter, the latter the form; the one the dogmatic principles, the
other the dialectic method.

The Augustine, who ruled the
thought of the Middle Ages, was the churchly, sacramentarian, anti-Manichaean,
and anti-Donatist theologian. It was the same Augustine, and yet another, to
whom Luther and Calvin appealed for their doctrines of sin and grace. How
strange that the same mighty intellect who helped to rear the structure of
Scholastic divinity should have aided the Reformers in pulling it down and
rearing another structure, at once more Scriptural and better adapted to the
practical needs of life!

Aristotle was, in the estimation
of the Middle Ages, the master philosophical thinker. The Schoolmen show their
surpassing esteem for him in calling him again and again "the
philosopher." Dante excluded both
him and Virgil as pagans from paradise and purgatory and placed them in the
vestibule of the inferno, where, however, they are exempt from actual
suffering. Aristotle was regarded as a forerunner of Christian truth, a John
the Baptist in method and knowledge of natural things—precursor Christi in
naturalibus. Until the thirteenth century, his works were only imperfectly
known. The Categories and the de interpretatione were known to Abaelard
and other Schoolmen in the Latin version of Boethius, and three books of the Organon
to John of Salisbury. His Physics and Metaphysics became
known about 1200, and all his works were made accessible early in the
thirteenth century through the mediation of the Arab philosophers, Avicenna, d.
1037, Averrhoes, d. 1198, and Abuacer, d. 1185, and through Jewish sources.
Roger Bacon laments the mistakes of translations made from the Arabic, by
Michael Scot, Gerard of Cremona, and others.1313

At first the Stagyrite was
looked upon with suspicion or even prohibited by the popes and synods as
adapted to breed heresy and spiritual pride.1314 But, from 1250 on, his authority continued supreme. The saying of
Gottfried of St. Victor became current in Paris.

The Reformers shook off his yoke
and Luther, in a moment of temper at the degenerate Schoolmen of his day,
denounced him as "the accursed pagan Aristotle" and in his Babylonish
Captivity called the mediaeval Church "the Thomistic or Aristotelian
Church."

The line of the Schoolmen begins
in the last year of the eleventh century with Roscellinus and Anselm. Two
centuries before, John Scotus Erigena had anticipated some of their discussions
of fundamental themes, and laid down the principle that true philosophy and
true religion are one. But he does not seem to have had any perceptible
influence on Scholastic thought. The history divides itself into three periods:
the rise of Scholasticism, its full bloom, and its decline.1316 To the first period belong Anselm, d. 1109, Roscellinus, d. about
1125, Abaelard, d. 1142, Bernard, d. 1153, Hugo de St. Victor, d. 1161, Richard
of St. Victor, d. 1173, and Gilbert of Poictiers, d. 1154. The chief names of
the second period are Peter the Lombard, d. 1160, Alexander of Hales, d. 1243,
Albertus Magnus, d. 1280, Thomas Aquinas, d. 1274, Bonaventura, d. 1274, Roger
Bacon, d. 1294, and Duns Scotus, d. 1308. To the period of decline belong,
among others, Durandus, d. 1334, Bradwardine, d. 1349, and Ockam, d. 1367.
England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain made contributions to this galaxy of
men. Gabriel Biel, professor at Tübingen, who died 1495, is usually called the
last of the Schoolmen. Almost all the great Schoolmen were monks.

The two centuries included
between the careers of Anselm and Duns Scotus show decided modifications of
opinion on important questions such as the immaculate conception, and in regard
to the possibility of proving from pure reason such doctrines as the
incarnation and the Trinity. These two doctrines Thomas Aquinas, as well as
Duns Scotus and Ockam, declared to be outside the domain of pure ratiocination.
Even the existence of God and the immortality of the soul came to be regarded
by Duns Scotus and the later Schoolmen as mysteries which were to be received
solely upon the authority of the Church. The argument from probability was
emphasized in the last stages of Scholastic thought as it had not been before.

In their effort to express the
minutest distinctions of thought, the Schoolmen invented a new vocabulary
unknown to classical Latin, including such words as ens, absolutum identitas
quidditas, haecceitas, aliquiditas, aleitas.1317 The sophistical speculations which they allowed themselves were,
for the most part, concerned with the angels, the Virgin Mary, the devil, the
creation, and the body of the resurrection. Such questions as the following
were asked and most solemnly discussed by the leading Schoolmen. Albertus
Magnus asked whether it was harder for God to create the universe than to
create man and whether the understandings of angels are brighter in the morning
or in the evening. "Who sinned most, Adam or Eve?" was a favorite
question with Anselm, Hugo de St. Victor,1318and others. Alexander of Hales
attempted to settle the hour of the day at which Adam sinned and, after a long
discussion, concluded it was at the ninth hour, the hour at which Christ
expired. Bonaventura debated whether several angels can be in one place at the
same time, whether one angel can be in several places at the same time, and
whether God loved the human race more than He loved Christ.1319 Anselm, in his work on the Trinity, asked whether God could have
taken on the female sex and why the Holy Spirit did not become incarnate. Of
the former question, Walter of St. Victor, speaking of Peter the Lombard, very
sensibly said that it would have been more rational for him to have asked why
the Lombard did not appear on earth as an ass than for the Lombard to ask
whether God could have become incarnate in female form. The famous discussion
over the effect the eating of the host would have upon a mouse will be taken up
in connection with the Lord's Supper. Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Thomas
Aquinas, and others pondered over the problem. It was asked by Robert Pullen
whether man in the resurrection will receive back the rib he lost in Eden, and
whether a man will recover all the clippings of his finger nails.

Such endless discussions have
been ridiculed as puerile and frivolous, though, as has already been said, they
grew out of the desire to be exhaustive. At last and justly, they brought
Scholasticism into disrepute. While it was losing itself in the clouds and
mists of things transcendental, it neglected the earth at its feet. As the
papacy passed sentence upon itself by intolerable ambition, so Scholasticism
undermined its authority by intellectual sophistries and was set aside by the
practical interests of the Renaissance and Humanism and by simple faith,
searching through the Scriptures, to reach the living sympathy of Christ.1320

§ 97. Realism and Nominalism.

The underlying philosophical
problem of the Scholastic speculations was the real and independent existence
of general or generic concepts, called universalia or universals. Do
they necessarily involve substantial being?
On this question the Schoolmen were divided into two camps, the Realists
and the Nominalists.1321 The
question, which receives little attention now, was regarded as most important
in the Middle Ages.

Realism taught that the
universals are not mere generalizations of the mind but have a real existence.
Following Plato, as he is represented by Aristotle, one class of Realists held
that the universals are creative types, exemplars in the divine mind. Their
view was stated in the expression—universalia ante rem — that is, the
universals exist before the individual, concrete object. The Aristotelian
Realists held that the universals possess a real existence, but exist only in
individual things. This was the doctrine of universalia in re. Humanity,
for example, is a universal having a real existence. Socrates partakes of it,
and he is an individual man, distinct from other men. Anselm, representing the
Platonic school, treated the universal humanity as having independent existence
by itself. Duns Scotus, representing the second theory, found in the universal
the basis of all classification and gives to it only in this sense a real
existence.

The Nominalists taught that
universals or general conceptions have no antecedent existence. They are mere
names—nomina, flatus vocis, voces — and are derived from a comparison of
individual things and their qualities. Thus beauty is a conception of the mind
gotten from the observation of objects which are beautiful. The individual
things are first observed and the universal, or abstract conception, is derived
from it. This doctrine found statement in the expression universalia post
rem, the universal becomes known after the individual. A modification of
this view went by the name of Conceptualism, or the doctrine that universals
have existence as conceptions in the mind, but not in real being.1322

The starting-point for this
dialectical distinction may have been a passage in Porphyry's Isagoge,
as transmitted by Boethius. Declining to enter into a discussion of the
question, Porphyry asks whether the universals are to be regarded as having
distinct substantial existence apart from tangible things or whether they were
only conceptions of the mind, having substantial existence only in tangible
things.1323 The
distinction assumed practical importance when it was applied to such
theological doctrines as the Trinity, the atonement, and original sin.

The theory of Realism was called
in question in the eleventh century by Roscellinus, a contemporary of Anselm
and the teacher of Abaelard, who, as it would seem, advocated Nominalism.1324 Our knowledge of his views is derived almost exclusively from the
statements of his two opponents, Anselm and Abaelard. He was serving as canon
of Compiegne in the diocese of Soissons, 1092, when he was obliged to recant
his alleged tritheism, which he substituted for the doctrine of the Trinity.

The views of this theologian called
forth Anselm's treatise on the Trinity, and Abaelard despised him as a quack
dialectician.1325 Anselm
affirmed that Roscellinus' heretical views on the Trinity were the immediate
product of his false philosophical principle, the denial that universals have
real existence. Roscellinus called the three persons of the Godhead three
substances, as Scotus Erigena had done before. These persons were three
distinct beings equal in power and will, but each separate from the other and
complete in himself, like three men or angels. These three could not be one God
in the sense of being of the same essence, for then the Father and the Holy
Spirit would have had to become incarnate as well as the Son.

Defending the orthodox doctrine
of the Trinity, Anselm proceeded on the basis of strict realism and declared
that the three persons represented three relations and not three substances.
Fountain, brook, and pond are three; yet the same water is in each one and we
could not say the brook is the fountain or the fountain is the pond. The water
of the brook may be carried through a pipe, but in that case it would not be
the fountain which was carried through, nor the pond. So in the same way, the
Godhead became incarnate without involving the incarnation of the Father and
Holy Spirit.

The decision of the synod of
Soissons and Anselm's argument drove Nominalism from the field and it was not
again publicly avowed till the fourteenth century when it was revived by the
energetic and practical mind of Ockam, by Durandus and others. It was for a
time fiercely combated by councils and King Louis XI., but was then adopted by
many of the great teachers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109,
the first of the great Schoolmen, was one of the ablest and purest men of the
mediaeval Church. He touched the history of his age at many points. He was an
enthusiastic advocate of monasticism. He was archbishop of Canterbury and
fought the battle of the Hildebrandian hierarchy against the State in England.
His Christian meditations give him a high rank in its annals of piety. His
profound speculation marks one of the leading epochs in the history of theology
and won for him a place among the doctors of the Church. While Bernard was
greatest as a monk, Anselm was greatest as a theologian. He was the most
original thinker the Church had seen since the days of Augustine.1326

Life.—Anselm was born at Aosta, in
Piedmont, at the foot of the great St. Bernard, which divides Italy from
western Switzerland.1327 He had a
pious mother, Ermenberga. His father, Gundulf, a worldly and rude nobleman, set
himself violently against his son's religious aspirations, but on his death-bed
himself assumed the monastic garb to escape perdition.

In his childish imagination,
Anselm conceived God Almighty as seated on a throne at the top of the Alps, and
in a dream, he climbed up the mountain to meet Him. Seeing, on his way, the
king's maidens engaged in the harvest field, for it was Autumn, neglecting
their work he determined to report their negligence to the king. The lad was
most graciously received and asked whence he came and what he desired. The
king's kindness made him forget all about the charges he was intending to make.
Then, refreshed with the whitest of bread, he descended again to the valley.
The following day he firmly believed he had actually been in heaven and eaten
at the Lord's table. This was the story he told after he had ascended the chair
of Canterbury.

A quarrel with his father led to
Anselm's leaving his home. He set his face toward the West and finally settled
in the Norman abbey of Le Bec, then under the care of his illustrious
countryman Lanfranc. Here he studied, took orders, and, on Lanfranc's transfer
to the convent of St. Stephen at Caen, 1063, became prior, and, in 1078, abbot.
At Bec he wrote most of his works. His warm devotion to the monastic life
appears in his repeated references to it in his letters and in his longing to
get back to the convent after he had been made archbishop.

In 1093, he succeeded Lanfranc
as archbishop of Canterbury. His struggle with William Rufus and Henry I. over
investiture has already been described (pp. 88-93). During his exile on the
Continent he attended a synod at Bari, where he defended the Latin doctrine of
the procession of the Holy Spirit against the Greek bishops who were present.1328

The archbishop's last years in
England were years of quiet, and he had a peaceful end. They lifted him from
the bed and placed him on ashes on the floor. There, "as morning was
breaking, on the Wednesday before Easter," April 21, 1109, the sixteenth
year of his pontificate and the seventy-sixth of his life, he slept in peace,
as his biographer Eadmer says, "having given up his spirit into the hands
of his Creator." He lies buried in
Canterbury Cathedral at the side of Lanfranc.

Anselm was a man of spotless
integrity, single devotion to truth and righteousness, patient in suffering,
and revered as a saint before his official canonization in 1494.1329 Dante associates him in Paradise with Nathan, the seer, and
Chrysostom, both famous for rebuking vice in high places, and with the
Calabrian prophet, Joachim.1330

Writings.—Anselm's chief works in the
departments of theology are his Monologium and Proslogium, which
present proofs for God's existence, and the Cur Deus homo, "Why God
became Man," a treatise on the atonement. He also wrote on the Trinity
against Roscellinus; on original sin, free will, the harmony of foreknowledge
and foreordination, and the fall of the devil. To these theological treatises
are to be added a number of writings of a more practical nature, homilies,
meditations, and four hundred and twelve letters in which we see him in
different relations, as a prelate of the Church, a pastor, as a teacher giving
advice to pupils, and as a friend.1331 His correspondence shows him in his human relations. His
meditations and prayers reveal the depth of his piety. His theological
treatises betray the genius of his intellect. In extent they are far less
voluminous than the works of Thomas Aquinas and other Schoolmen of the later
period.

Theology.—Anselm was one of those rare
characters in whom lofty reason and childlike faith work together in perfect harmony.
Love to God was the soul of his daily life and love to God is the burning
centre of his theology. It was not doubt that led him to speculation, but
enthusiasm for truth and devotion to God. His famous proposition, which
Schleiermacher adopted as a motto for his own theology, is that faith precedes
knowledge—fides praecedit intellectum. Things divine must be a matter of
experience before they can be comprehended by the intellect. "He who does
not believe," Anselm said, "has not felt, and he who has not felt,
does not understand."1332 Christ
must come to the intellect through the avenue of faith and not to faith through
the avenue of intellect.1333 On the
other hand, Anselm declared himself against blind belief, and calls it a sin of
neglect when he who has faith, does not strive after knowledge.1334

These views, in which
supernaturalism and rationalism are harmonized, form the working principle of the
Anselmic theology. The two sources of knowledge are the Bible and the teaching
of the Church which are in complete agreement with one another and are one with
true philosophy.1335 Anselm
had a profound veneration for the great African teacher, Augustine, and his
agreement with him in spirit and method secured for him the titles "the
second Augustine" and the, Tongue of Augustine."

Anselm made two permanent contributions
to theology, his argument for the existence of God and his theory of the
atonement.

The ontological argument, which
he stated, constitutes an epoch in the history of the proofs for God's
existence. It was first laid clown in the Monologium or Soliloquy,
which he called the example of meditation on the reasonableness of faith, but
mixed with cosmological elements. Starting from the idea that goodness and
truth must have an existence independent of concrete things, Anselm ascends
from the conception of what is relatively good and great, to Him who is
absolutely good and great.

In the Proslogium, or Allocution,
the ontological argument is presented in its purest form. Anselm was led to its
construction by the desire to find out a single argument, sufficient in itself,
to prove the divine existence. The argument was the result of long reflection
and rooted in piety and prayer. Day and night the author was haunted with the
idea that God's existence could be so proved. He was troubled over it to such a
degree that at times he could not sleep or take his meals. Finally, one night,
during vigils, the argument stood clearly before his mind in complete outline.
The notes were written down while the impression was still fresh in Anselm's
mind. The first copy was lost; the second was inadvertently broken to pieces.

Anselm's argument, which is the
highest example of religious meditation and scholastic reasoning, is prefaced
with an exhortation and the words, "I do not seek to understand in order
that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand, for of this I
feel sure, that, if I did not believe, I would not understand."

The reasoning starts from the
idea the mind has of God, and proceeds to the affirmation of the necessity of
God's objective existence. The mind has a concept of something than which
nothing greater can be conceived.1336 This even the fool has, when he says in his heart, "there is
no God, " Ps. 14:1. He grasps the conception when he listens, and what he
grasps is in his mind. This something, than which nothing greater can be
conceived, cannot exist solely in the mind. For, if it existed solely in the
mind, then it would be possible to think of it as existing also in reality
(objectively), and that would be something greater.1337 This is impossible. This thing, therefore, than which nothing
greater can be conceived, exists both in the mind and in reality. This is God.
"So truly," exclaims Anselm, "dost Thou exist, O Lord God, that
it is not possible to conceive of Thee as not existing. For, if any mind could
conceive of anything better than Thou art, then the creature would ascend above
the Creator and become His judge, which is supremely absurd. Everything else
besides Thyself can be conceived of as not existing."

The syllogism, compact as its
presentation is and precise as its language seems to be, is nevertheless
defective, as a logical statement. It begs the question. It offends against the
principle that deductions from a definition are valid only on the supposition
that the thing defined exists. The definition and the statement of God's
existence are in the major premise, "there is something than which nothing
greater can be conceived." And yet
it was the objective existence of this being, Anselm wanted to prove. Setting
this objection aside, there is the other fatal objection that objective
existence is not a predicate. Objective being is implied when we affirm
anything. This objection was stated by Kant.1338 Again, Anselm confused, as synonymous, understanding a thing and
having a conception in the understanding.1339

The reasoning of the Proslogium
was attacked by the monk Gaunilo of Marmontier, near Bec, in his Liber
pro insipiente. He protested against the inference from the subjective
conception to objective reality on the ground that by the same method we might
argue from any of our conceptions to the reality of the thing conceived, as for
example for the existence of a lost island, the Atlantis. "That, than
which nothing greater can be thought," does not exist in the mind in any
other way than does the perfection of such an island. The real existence of a
thing must be known before we can predicate anything of it. Gaunilo's objection
Anselm answered by declaring that the idea of the lost island was not a
necessary conception while that of the highest being was, and that it was to it
alone his argument applied.

Untenable as Anselm's argument
is logically, it possesses a strong fascination, and contains a great truth.
The being of God is an intuition of the mind, which can only be explained by
God's objective existence. The modern theory of correlation lends its aid to
corroborate what was, after all, fundamental in the Anselmic presentation,
namely, that the idea of God in the mind must have corresponding to it a God
who really exists. Otherwise, we are left to the mystery which is perhaps still
greater, how such an idea could ever have taken firm and general hold of the
human mind.1340

The doctrine of the atonement.—With the Cur Deus homo,
"Why God became Man," a new chapter opens in the development of the
doctrine of the atonement. The treatise, which is in the form of a dialogue, is
the author's most elaborate work, and he thought the argument sufficient to
break down the objections of Jew and Pagan to the Christian system.

Anselm was the first to attempt
to prove the necessity of the incarnation and death of the Son of God by the
processes of pure reason. He argued that the world cannot be redeemed by an
arbitrary decree of God, nor through man or angel. Man is under the domination
of the devil, deserves punishment, and is justly punished; but the devil
torments him without right,1341for he does not do it by the
authority of God, but from malice. The handwriting of ordinances against the
sinner (Col. 2:14) is not a note due the devil, but the sentence of God that he
who sinned should be the servant of sin.

God cannot allow his original
purpose to be thwarted. Sin must be forgiven, but how? Man owes subjection to God's will. Sin is
denying to God the honor due him.1342 Satisfaction must be rendered to justice before there can be
forgiveness. Bare restitution, however, is not a sufficient satisfaction. For
his "contumely," man must give back more than he has taken. He must
compensate God's honor.1343 Just as
he who has inflicted a wound must not only heal the wound, but pay damages to
satisfy the demands of violated honor.

All sin, then, must either
receive punishment or be covered by satisfaction. Can man make this
satisfaction? No. Were it possible for
him to lead a perfectly holy life, from the moment he became conscious of his
debt, he would be simply doing his duty for that period. The debt of the past
would remain unsettled. But sin, having struck at the roots of man's being, he
is not able to lead a perfect life.

God's justice, then, man is not
able to satisfy. Man ought, but cannot. God need not, but does. For, most
foreign to God would it be to allow man, the most precious of his creatures, to
perish. But as God himself must make the satisfaction, and man ought to make it,
the satisfaction must be made by one who is both God and man, that is, the
God-man.1344

To make satisfaction, the
God-man must give back to God something he is not under obligation to render. A
life of perfect obedience he owes. Death he does not owe, for death is the
wages of sin, and he had no sin. By submitting to death, he acquired merit.
Because this merit is infinite in value, being connected with the person of the
infinite Son of God, it covers the infinite guilt of the sinner and constitutes
the satisfaction required.

Anselm concludes his treatise
with the inquiry why the devil and his angels are not saved by Christ. His
answer is that they did not derive their guilt and sinful estate through a
single individual as men do from Adam. Each sinned for himself. For this reason
each would have to be saved for himself by a God-angel. In declaring the
salvation of fallen angels to be impossible, Anselm closes with the words,
"I do not say that this is impossible as though the value of Christ's
death were not great enough to be sufficient for all the sins of men and fallen
angels, but because of a reason in the unchangeable nature of things which
stands in the way of the salvation of the lost angels."1345

It is the merit of Anselm's
argument that, while Athanasius and Augustine had laid stress upon the article
that through Christ's sufferings atonement was made, Anselm explained the
necessity of those sufferings. He also did the most valuable service of setting
aside the view, which had been handed down from the Fathers, that Christ's
death was a ransom-price paid to Satan. Even Augustine had asserted the rights
of the devil. Again, Anselm laid proper stress upon the guilt of sin. He made
earnest with it, not as a mistake, but as a violation of law, a derogation from
the honor due to God.

The subject of the atonement was
not exhausted by the argument of the Cur Deus homo. No one theory can
comprehend its whole meaning. Certain biblical features have been made
prominent since his day which Anselm did not emphasize. Each creative age has its
own statement of theology, and now one aspect and now another aspect of the
unchangeable biblical truth is made prominent. The different theories must be
put into their proper places as fragments of the full statement of truth.
Anselm regarded the atonement from the legal rather than from the moral side of
the divine nature. The attribute of justice is given a disproportionate
emphasis. Man's relation to God is construed wholly as the relation of a
subordinate to a superior. The fatherhood of God has no adequate recognition.
The actor in human redemption is God, the sovereign and the judge. Anselm left
out John 3:16 and the Parable of the Prodigal Son.1346

Anselm as a mystic.—In Anselm, mysticism was
combined with scholasticism, pious devotion with lofty speculation, prayer with
logical analysis. His deeply spiritual nature manifests itself in all his
writings, but especially in his strictly devotional works, his Meditations and
Prayers.1347 They are
in danger of suffering neglect in the attention given to Anselm's theological
discussions.

The Schoolman's spiritual
reflections abound in glowing utterances from the inner tabernacle of his
heart. Now he loses himself in the contemplation of the divine attributes, now
he laments over the deadness and waywardness of man. Now he soars aloft in
strains of praise and adoration, now he whispers low the pleadings for mercy
and pardon. At one moment he surveys the tragedy of the cross or the joys of
the redeemed; at another the terrors of the judgment and hopeless estate of the
lost. Such a blending of mellow sentiment with high speculations is seldom
found. No one of the greater personages of the Middle Ages, except Bernard,
excels him in the mystical element; and he often reminds us of Bernard, as when
he exclaims, "O good Jesus, how sweet thou art to the heart of him who
thinks of thee and loves thee."1348 Or again, when he exclaims in his tenth meditation, "O benign
Jesus, condescending Lord, holy Master, sweet in mouth, sweet in heart, sweet
in ear, inscrutably, unutterably gentle, self-sacrificing, merciful, wise,
mighty, most sweet and lovely"—valde dulcis et suavis. The soaring
grandeur of Anselm's thoughts may be likened to the mountains of the land of
his birth, and the pure abundance of his spiritual feeling to the brooks and
meadows of its valleys. He quotes again and again from Scripture, and its
language constitutes the chief vehicle of his thoughts.

In the first meditation, Anselm
makes the famous comparison of human life to the passage over a slender bridge,
spanning a deep, dark abyss whose bed is full of all kinds of foul and ghastly
things.1349 The
bridge is a single foot in width. What anguish would not take hold of one
obliged to cross over it, with eyes bandaged and arms tied, so as not to be
able even to use a staff to feel one's way!
And how greatly would not the anguish be increased, if great birds were
flying in the air, intent on swooping down and defeating the purpose of the
traveller! And how much more anguish
would be added if at every step a tile should fall away from behind him! The ravine is hell, measureless in its
depth, horribly dark with black, dismal vapors!1350 And the perilous bridge is the present life. Whosoever lives ill
falls into the abyss. The tiles are the single days of a man's existence here
below. The birds are malign spirits. We, the travellers, are blinded with
ignorance and bound with the iron difficulty of doing well. Shall we not turn
our eyes unto the Lord "who is our light and our salvation, of whom shall
we be afraid?" Ps. 27:1.

The Prayers are addressed to the
Son and Spirit as well as to the Father. To these are added petitions to the
Virgin, on whom Anselm bestows the most fulsome titles, and to the saints. In
this Anselm was fully the child of his age.

These devotional exercises, the liturgy of Anselm's
soul, are a storehouse of pious thought to which due appreciation has not been
accorded. The mystical element gives him a higher place than his theological
treatises, elevated and important as they are.1351

During the first half of the
twelfth century, Peter Abaelard, 1079-1142, was one of the most conspicuous
characters of Europe. His fame was derived from the brilliance of his
intellect. He differed widely from Anselm. The latter was a constructive
theologian; Abaelard, a critic. Anselm was deliberate, Abaelard, impulsive and
rash. Anselm preferred seclusion; Abaelard sought publicity. Among teachers
exercising the spell of magnetism over their hearers, Abaelard stands in the
front rank and probably has not been excelled in France. In some of his
theological speculations he was in advance of his age. His personal misfortunes
give to his biography a flavor of romance which belongs to no other Schoolman.
A man of daring thought and restless disposition, he was unstable in his mental
beliefs and morally unreliable. Our main authority for his career is the Story
of Misfortunes, Historia calamitatum, written by his own hand, (Migne, 178.
113-180,) in the form of a letter.

The eldest son of a knight,
Abaelard was born at the village of Palais or le Pallet, a few miles from
Nantes. His original name was Pierre de Palais. Both his parents entered
convents. Abaelard had for his first teacher Roscellinus. He listened to William
of Champeaux, then at the head of the cathedral school at Paris, and soon began
with confidence to refute William's positions.1352 He then established independent schools at Melun and Corbeil.
After a period of sickness, spent under his father's roof, he returned to
Paris. He again listened to William on rhetoric, but openly announced himself
as an antagonist of his views, and taught on Mt. Genevieve, then covered with
vineyards. Abaelard represents himself as having drawn almost the last scholar
away from the cathedral school to Genevieve. We next find him under Anselm of
Laon, who, with his brother Radulf, had made the school of Laon famous. Again
Abaelard set himself up against his teacher, describing him as having a
wonderful flow of words, but no thoughts. When he lit a fire, he filled the
whole house with smoke.1353 He was
like the barren fig tree with the promise of leaves and nothing more. Abaelard
started at Laon counter lectures on Ezekiel.

Now the opportunity of his life
came and he was called to preside over the cathedral school at Paris. William
of Champeaux had retired to St. Victor and then had been made bishop. The years
that immediately followed were the most brilliant in Abaelard's career. All the
world seemed about to do him homage. Scholars from all parts thronged to hear
him. He lectured on philosophy and theology. He was well read in classical and
widely read in sacred literature. His dialectic powers were ripe and, where
arguments failed, the teacher's imagination and rhetoric came to the rescue.
His books were read not only in the schools and convents, but in castles and
guildhouses. William of Thierry said1354they crossed the seas and
overleaped the Alps. When he visited towns, the people crowded the streets and
strained their necks to catch a glimpse of him. His remarkable influence over
men and women must be explained not by his intellectual depth so much as by a
certain daring and literary art and brilliance. He was attractive of person,
and Bernard may have had this in mind when he says, Abaelard was outwardly a
John though he had the heart of a Herod.1355 His statements were clear. He used apt analogies and quoted
frequently from Horace, Ovid, and other Latin poets. To these qualities he
added a gay cheerfulness which expressed itself in compositions of song and in singing,
which made him acceptable to women, as in later years Heloise reminded him.1356

In the midst of this popularity
came the fell tragedy of his life, his connection with Heloise, whom Remusat
has called "the first of women."1357 This, the leading French woman of the Middle Ages, stands forth
invested with a halo as of queenly dignity, while her seducer forfeits by his
treatment of her the esteem of all who prefer manly strength and fidelity to gifts
of mind, however brilliant.

Heloise was probably the
daughter of a canon and had her home in Paris with her uncle, Fulbert, also a
canon. When Abaelard came to know her, she was seventeen, attractive in person
and richly endowed in mind. Abaelard prevailed upon Fulbert to admit him to his
house as Heloise's teacher. Heloise had before been at the convent of
Argenteuil. The meetings between pupil and tutor became meetings of lovers.
Over open books, as Abaelard wrote, more words of love were passed than of
discussion and more kisses than instruction. The matter was whispered about in
Paris. Fulbert was in rage. Abaelard removed Heloise to his sister's in
Brittany, where she bore a son, called Astralabius.1358 Abaelard expressed readiness to have the nuptial ceremony
performed, though in secret, in order to placate Fulbert. Open marriage was
eschewed lest he should himself suffer loss to his fame, as he himself
distinctly says.1359

The Story of Misfortunes leaves
no doubt that what he was willing to do proceeded from fear and that he was not
actuated by any sense of honor toward Heloise or proper view of woman or of
marriage. What accord, he wrote, "has study with nurses, writing materials
with cradles, books and desks with spinning wheels, reeds and ink with
spindles! Who, intent upon sacred and
philosophical reflections could endure the squalling of children, the lullabies
of nurses and the noisy crowd of men and women! Who would stand the disagreeable and constant dirt of little
children!"

Abaelard declared a secret
marriage was performed in obedience to the demands of Heloise's relatives. At
best it was a mock ceremony, for Heloise persisted in denying she was
Abaelard's wife. With mistaken but splendid devotion, she declined to marry
him, believing that marriage would interrupt his career. In one of her letters
to him she wrote: "If to you, the name of wife seems more proper, to me
always was more dear the little word friend, or if you do not deem that name
proper, then the name of concubine or harlot, concubina vel scortum. I
invoke God as my witness that, if Augustus had wished to give me the rule over
the whole world by asking me in marriage, I would rather be your mistress, meretrix,
than his empress, imperatrix. Thy passion drew thee to me rather than
thy friendship, and the heat of desire rather than love."1360

Abaelard removed Heloise to
Argenteuil and she assumed the veil. He visited her in secret and now Fulbert
took revenge. Entering into collusion with Abaelard's servant, he fell upon him
at night and mutilated him. Thus humiliated, Abaelard entered the convent of
St. Denis, 1118,—not from any impulse of piety but from expediency.1361 He became indifferent to Heloise.

New trials fell upon his
chequered career—charges of heresy. He was arraigned for Sabellian views on the
Trinity at Soissons, 1121, before the papal legate. Roscellinus, his old
teacher, opened the accusations. Abaelard complains that two enemies were
responsible for the actual trial and its issue, Alberic and Lotulf, teachers at
Rheims. He was obliged to commit his book to the flames1362and to read publicly a copy of
the Athanasian Creed.

Again he got himself into
difficulty by opposing the current belief, based upon Bede's statement, that
Dionysius or St. Denis, the patron of France, was the Dionysius converted by
Paul at Athens. The monks of St. Denis would not tolerate him. He fled, retracted
his utterance, and with the permission of Suger, the new abbot of St. Denis,
settled in a waste tract in Champagne and built an oratory which he called
after the third person of the Trinity, the Paraclete. Students again gathered
around him, and the original structure of reeds and straw was replaced by a
substantial building of stone. But old rivals, as he says, again began to
pursue him just as the heretics pursued Athanasius of old, and "certain
ecclesiastics"—presumably Norbert, the founder of the Premonstrants, and
Bernard of Clairvaux—were stirred up against him. Abaelard, perhaps with not
too much self-disparagement, says of himself that, in comparison to them, he
seemed to be as an ant before a lion. It was under these circumstances that he
received the notice of his election as abbot of the monastery of St. Gildas on
the sea, in his native Brittany. He went, declaring that "the envy of the
Francians drove him to the West, as the envy of the Romans drove Jerome to the
East."

The monks of St. Gildas are
portrayed by Abaelard as a band of unmitigated ruffians. They had their wives
and children settled upon the convent's domains. They treated their new abbot
with contempt and violence, twice, at least, attempting his life. On one
occasion it was by drugging the chalice. He complained of the barrenness of the
surroundings. Bernard described him as an abbot without discipline. In sheer
despair, Abaelard fled and in "striving to escape one sword I threw myself
upon another," he said. At this point the autobiography breaks off and we
know little of its author till 1136.1363

In the meantime the nuns of
Argentueil were driven out of their quarters. In 1127, Abaelard placed Heloise
in charge of the Paraclete, and under her management it became prosperous. He
had observed a cold silence for a protracted period, but now and again visited
the Paraclete and delivered sermons to the nuns. Heloise received the Story
of Misfortunes, and, in receiving it, wrote, addressing him as "her
lord or rather father, her husband or rather brother, from his handmaid or
rather daughter, his consort or rather sister." Her first two letters have scarcely, if ever, been equalled in
the annals of correspondence in complete abandonment of heart and glowing
expressions of devotion. She appealed to him to send her communications. Had
she not offered her very being on the altar for his sake! Had she not obeyed him in everything, and in
nothing would she offend him!

Abaelard replied to Heloise as
the superior of the nuns of the Paraclete. She was to him nothing more. He
preached to her sermons on prayer, asked for the intercession of the nuns on
his behalf, and directed that his body be laid away in the Paraclete. He
rejoiced that Heloise's connection with himself prevented her from entering
into marriage and giving birth to children. She had thereby been forced into a
higher life and to be the mother of many spiritual daughters. Heloise plied him
with questions about hard passages in the Scriptures and about practical
matters of daily living and monastic dress, —a device to secure the continuance
of the correspondence. Abaelard replied by giving rules for the nuns which were
long and severe. He enjoined upon them, above all else, the study of the
Scriptures, and called upon them to imitate Jerome who took up Hebrew late in
life. He sent them sermons, seven of which had been delivered in the Paraclete.
He proposed that there should be a convent for monks close by the Paraclete.
The monks and nuns were to help each other. An abbot was to stand at the head
of both institutions. The nuns were to do the monks' washing and cooking, milk
the cows, feed the chickens and geese.

In 1137 and again in 1139, we
find Abaelard suddenly installed at St. Genevieve and enjoying, for a while,
meteoric popularity. John of Salisbury was one of his pupils. How the change
was brought about does not fully appear. But Abaelard was not destined to have
peace. The final period of his restless career now opens. Bernard was at that
time the most imposing religious personality of Europe, Abaelard was its
keenest philosophical thinker. The one was the representative of churchmanship
and church authority, the other of freedom of inquiry. A clash between these
two personalities was at hand. It cannot be regarded as an historical
misfortune that these two men met on the open field of controversy and on the
floor of ecclesiastical synods. History is most true to herself when she
represents men just as they were. She is a poor teacher, when she does not take
opportunity to reveal their infirmities as well as their virtues.

Abaelard was as much to blame
for bringing on the conflict by his self-assertive manner as Bernard was to
blame by unnecessarily trespassing upon Abaelard's territory. William, abbot of
St. Thierry, addressed a letter to Bernard and Geoffrey, bishop of Chalons,
announcing that Abaelard was again teaching and writing doctrinal novelties.
These were not matters of mean import, but concerned the doctrine of the
Trinity, the person of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God's grace. They were even
receiving favor in the curia at Rome. William adduced no less than thirteen
errors.1364

The first open sign of
antagonism was a letter written by Abaelard, brimming over with self-conceit.
On a visit to Heloise at the Paraclete, Bernard had taken exception to the use
of the phrase "supersubstantial bread" in the Lord's Prayer, instead
of "daily bread" as given by Luke. Abaelard heard of the objection
from Heloise, and, as if eager to break a lance with Bernard, wrote to him,
showing he was in error. He became sarcastic, pointing out that, at Clairvaux,
novelties were being practised which were otherwise unknown to the Church. New
hymns were sung and certain intercessory prayers left out as if the Cistercian
monks did not stand in need of intercession also.1365

So far as we know, Bernard did
not answer this letter. After some delay, he acted upon the request of William
of Thierry. He visited Abaelard in Paris and sought to secure from him a
promise that he would retract his errors.1366

The difference was brought to
open conflict at the synod of Sens, 1141, where Abaelard asked that his case
might be presented, and that he might meet Bernard in argument. Arnold of
Brescia seems to have been among those present.1367 Bernard was among friends and admirers. Abaelard had few friends,
and was from the first looked upon with suspicion. Bernard had come to the
synod to lay the whole weight of his influence against Abaelard. He had
summoned the bishops as friends of Christ, whose bride called to them out of
the thicket of heresies. He wrote to the cardinals and to Innocent II.,
characterizing Abaelard as a ravenous lion, and a dragon. With Arnold as his
armor-bearer at his side, Abaelard stood like another Goliath calling out
against the ranks of Israel, while Bernard felt himself a youth in dialectical
skill.

At a preliminary meeting with
the bishops, Bernard went over the case and it seems to have been decided, at
least in an informal way, that Abaelard should be condemned.1368 The next day Bernard publicly presented the charges, but, to the
great surprise of all, Abaelard declined to argue his case and appealed it to
the pope. Passing by Gilbert of Poictiers, Abaelard is said to have whispered
Horace's line,

"Look
well to your affairs now that your neighbor's house is burning."

Nam
tua res agitur, paries eum proximus ardet.

To Rome the case must go.
Abaelard no doubt felt that he had nothing to hope for from the prelates.1369 From Innocent II., whose side he had espoused against the
antipope, Anacletus, he might expect some favor and he had friends in the
curia. The synod called upon the supreme pontiff to brand Abaelard's heresies
with perpetual condemnation—perpetua damnatione — and to punish their
defenders. The charges, fourteen in number, concerned the Trinity, the nature
of faith, the power and work of Christ, and the nature of sin.1370 Bernard followed up the synodal letter with a communication to the
pope, filling forty columns in Migne, and letters to cardinals, which are full
of vehement charges against the accused man. Abaelard and Arnold of Brescia
were in collusion. Abaelard had joined himself with Arius in ascribing degrees
within the Trinity, with Pelagius in putting free will before grace, and with
Nestorius in separating the person of Christ. In name and exterior a monk, he
was at heart a heretic. He had emerged from Brittany as a tortuous snake from
its hole and, as in the case of the hydra, seven heads appeared where before
there had been but one.1371 In his
letter to the pope, he declared the only thing Abaelard did not know was the
word nescio, "I do not know."

The judgment was swift in coming
and crushing when it came. Ten days were sufficient. The fourteen articles were
burned by the pope's own hand in front of St. Peter's in the presence of the
cardinals. Abaelard himself was declared to be a heretic and the penalty of
perpetual silence and confinement was imposed upon him. The unfortunate man had
set out for Rome and was hardly well started on his journey, when the sentence
reached him. He stopped at Cluny, where he met the most useful friend of his
life, Peter the Venerable. At Peter's intercession, Innocent allowed the
homeless scholar to remain in Cluny whence the pope himself had gone forth.

Following Peter's counsel,
Abaelard again met Bernard face to face. In a defence of his orthodoxy,
addressed to Heloise, he affirmed his acceptance of all the articles of the
Church from the article on the Trinity to the resurrection of the dead. As it
was with Jerome, so no one could write much without being misunderstood.

But his turbulent career was at
an end. He was sent by Peter to St. Marcellus near Chalons for his health, and
there he died April 21, 1142, sixty-three years old. His last days in Cluny are
described by Peter in a letter written to Heloise, full of true Christian
sympathy. He called Abaelard a true philosopher of Christ. One so humble in
manner he had not seen. He was abstinent in meat and drink. He read continually
and prayed fervently. Faithfully he had committed his body and soul to his Lord
Redeemer for time and eternity. "So Master Peter finished his days and he
who was known in almost the whole world for his great erudition and ability as
a teacher died peacefully in Him who said 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly
of heart,' and he is, as we must believe, gone to Him."

Abaelard's body was carried to
the Paraclete and there given rest. Twenty-two years later, Heloise was laid at
his side. The inscription placed over the tomb ran, "The Socrates of the
Gauls, the great Plato of the Occidentals, our Aristotle, who was greater or
equal to him among the logicians!
Abaelard was the prince of the world's scholars, varied in talent,
subtle and keen, conquering all things by his mental force. And then he became
a conqueror indeed, when, entering Cluny, be passed over to the true philosophy
of Christ."1372 At a
later time the following inscription was placed over the united dust of these
remarkable and unfortunate personages, "Under this marble lie the founder
of this convent, P. Abaelard and the first abbess Heloise, once joined by
studies, mind, love, forbidden marriage,—infaustis nuptiis, —and
penitence and now, as we hope, in eternal felicity."

At the destruction of the Paraclete
during the French Revolution, 1792, the marble sarcophagus was removed to Paris
and in 1816 it was transferred to the cemetery of Père la Chaise. There it
remains, the chief object of interest in that solemn place of the dead,
attracting Frenchmen and visitors from distant lands who commemorate, with
tears of sympathy and a prayer over the mistakes of mortals, the unfortunate
lovers.

§ 100. Abaelard's Teachings and Theology.

Furnished with brilliant
talents, Abaelard stands in the front rank of French public teachers. But he
was a creature of impulse and offensively conscious of his own gifts and
acquirements. He lacked the reverent modesty and equilibrium which become
greatness. He was deficient in moral force to lift him above the whips and stings
of fortune, or rather the calamities of his own making. He seems to have
discerned no goal beyond his own selfish ambition. As Neander has said, if he
had been a man of pure moral character, he would have accomplished more than he
did in the domain of scholarly study. A man of the highest type could not have
written his Story of Misfortunes in the tone that Abaelard wrote. He
shows not a sign of repentance towards God for his treatment of Heloise. When
he recalls that episode, it is not to find fault with himself, and it is not to
do her any reparation.

His readiness to put himself in
opposition to his teachers and to speak contemptuously of them and to find the
motive for such opposition in envy, indicates also a lack of the higher moral
sentiment. It is his own loss of fame and position that he is continually
thinking of, and lamenting. Instead of ascribing his misfortunes to his own
mistakes and mistemper, he ascribes them to the rivalry and jealousy of others.1373 His one aim in his troubles seems to have been to regain his
popularity.

Abaelard's writings are
dialectic, ethical, and theological treatises, poems and letters to Heloise,
and his autobiography. His chief theological works are a Commentary on the
Romans, the Introduction to Theology, and a Christian Theology,
the last two being mainly concerned with the Trinity, a colloquy between a
philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian and the Sic et Non, Yes and No. In
the last work the author puts side by side in one hundred and fifty-eight
chapters a collection of quotations from the Fathers which seem to be or really
are contradictory. The compiler does not offer a reconciliation. The subjects
on which the divergent opinions are collated range from the abstruse problem of
the Trinity and the person of Christ to the questions whether Eve alone was
seduced or Adam with her, whether Adam was buried on Calvary (the view taken by
Ambrose and Jerome) or not (Isidore of Seville), and whether Adam was saved or
not. His chief writing on Ethics was the Scito te ipsum, "Know
thyself."

In some of his theological
conceptions Abaelard was in advance of his age. The new seeds of thought which
he let fall have germinated in recent times. His writings show that, in the
twelfth century also, the critical sense had a representative.

1. In the conflict over Realism
and Nominalism Abaelard occupied an intermediate position. On the one hand he
ridiculed the nominalism of Roscellinus, and on the other he controverted the
severe realism of William of Champeaux. He taught that the universal is more
than a word, vox. It is an affirmation, sermo.1374 That which our thinking finds to be common, he declared to be
real, and the forms of things existed in the divine mind before the creation.

2. Of much more interest are
Abaelard's views of the ultimate seat of religious authority and of
inspiration. Although his statements at times seem to be contradictory, the
conclusion is justified that he was an advocate of a certain freedom of
criticism and inquiry, even though its results contradicted the authority of
the Church. He recognized the principle of inspiration, but by this he did not
mean what Gregory the Great taught, that the biblical authors were altogether
passive. They exercised a measure of independence, and they were kept from all
mistakes.

The rule upon which he treated
the Fathers and the Scriptures is set forth in the Prologue of the Sic et
Non.1375 In
presenting the contradictory opinions of the Fathers he shows his intellectual
freedom, for the accredited belief was that their statements were invariably
consistent. Abaelard pronounced this a mistake. Did not Augustine retract some
of his statements? Their mistakes,
however, and the supposed mistakes of the Scriptures may be only imaginary, due
to our failure to understand what they say. Paul, in saying that Melchisedek
has neither father nor mother, only meant that the names of his parents were
not given in the Old Testament. The appearance of Samuel to Saul at the
interview with the witch of Endor was only a fancy, not a reality. Prophets did
not always speak with the Spirit of God, and Peter made mistakes. Why should
not the Fathers also have made mistakes?
The authority of Scripture and the Fathers does not preclude critical
investigation. On the contrary, the critical spirit is the proper spirit in
which to approach them. "In the spirit of doubt we approach inquiry, and
by inquiry we find out the truth, as He, who was the Truth said, 'Seek and ye
shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' "1376

The mystical and the
philosophical elements, united in Anselm, were separated in Abaelard. But
Abaelard followed the philosophical principle further than Anselm. He was a
born critic, restless of mind, and anxious to make an innovation. In him the
inquisitive temper was in the ascendant over the fiducial. Some writers even
treat him as the forerunner of modern rationalism. In appearance, at least, he
started from a principle the opposite of Anselm's, namely, "nothing is to
be believed, until it has been understood."1377 His definition of faith as a presumption of things not seen1378was interpreted by Bernard and
other contemporaries to mean that faith was an uncertain opinion. What Abaelard
probably meant was, that faith does not rest upon authority, but upon inquiry
and experience. There are times, however, when he seems to contradict himself
and to set forth the opposite principle. He says, "We believe in order to
know, and unless ye believe, ye cannot know."1379 His contemporaries felt that he was unsound and that his position
would overthrow the authority of the Church.1380

The greater doctrines of the
Trinity and the existence of God, Abaelard held, could not be proved as
necessary, but only as probable. In opposition to the pruriency of
Scolasticism, he set up the principle that many things pertaining to God need
neither to be believed, nor denied, for no danger is involved in the belief or
denial of them.1381 He gives
as examples, whether God will send rain on the morrow or not, and whether God
will grant pity to a certain most wicked man or not. On the other hand be
declared that to affirm that we cannot understand what has been taught about
the Trinity is to say that the sacred writers themselves did not understand
what they taught.1382 As for
the Catholic faith, it is necessary for all, and no one of sound mind can be
saved without it.1383

3. In his statement of the
doctrine of the Trinity, Abaelard laid himself open to the charge both of
modalism and Arianism. It called forth Bernard's severest charges. Abaelard
made no contribution to the subject. The idea of the Trinity he derived from
God's absolute perfections. God, as power, is the Father; as wisdom, He is the
Son; as love, the Spirit. The Scriptures are appealed to for this view. The
Father has put all things in His power, Acts 1:7. The Son, as Logos, is wisdom.
The Holy Spirit is called good, Ps. 143:10, and imparts spiritual gifts. The
figure gave much umbrage, by which he compared the three persons of the Trinity
to the brass of which a seal is made, the form of the seal, and the seal itself
proceeding from, or combining the brass and the form. "The brass itself
which is the substance of the brazen seal, and the seal itself of which the
brass is the substance, are essentially one; yet the brass and the seal are so
distinct in their properties, that the property of the brass is one, and the
property of the brazen seal another." These are ultimately three things:
the brass, aes, the brass capable of sealing, sigillabile, and
the brass in the act of sealing, sigillans.

4. In his treatment of the
atonement, Abaelard has valuable original elements.1384 Strange to say, he makes no reference to Anselm's great treatise.
Man, Abaelard said, is in the power of the devil, but the devil has no right to
this power. What rights does a slave have over another slave whom he leads
astray? Christ not only did not pay any
price to the devil for man's redemption, he also did not make satisfaction to
divine justice and appease God's wrath. If the fall of Adam needed satisfaction
by the death of some one, who then would be able to satisfy for the death of
Christ? In the life and death of the
Redeemer, God's purpose was to manifest. His love and thus to stir up love in
the breast of man, and to draw man by love back to Himself. God might have
redeemed man by a word, but He chose to set before man an exhibition of His
love in Christ. Christ's love constitutes the merit of Christ. The theory
anticipates the modern moral influence theory of the atonement, so called.

5. Abaelard's doctrine of sin
likewise presents features of difference from the view current in his time.1385 The fall occurred when Eve resolved to eat the forbidden fruit,
that is, after her desire was aroused and before the actual partaking of the
fruit.1386

The seat of sin is the
intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.1387 Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio,
is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one
without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong.
In this consciousness of right or wrong lies the guilt. Those who put Christ to
death from a feeling that they were doing right, did not sin, or, if they
sinned, sinned much less grievously than if they had resisted their conscience
and not put him to death. How then was it that Christ prayed that those who
crucified him might be forgiven?
Abaelard answers by saying that the punishment for which forgiveness was
asked was temporal in its nature.

The logical deduction from
Abaelard's premises would have been that no one incurs penalty but those who
voluntarily consent to sin. But from this he shrank back. The godless condition
of the heathen he painted in darkest colors. He, however, praised the
philosophers and ascribed to them a knowledge through the Sibylline books, or
otherwise, of the divine unity and even of the Trinity.1388 Bernard wrote to Innocent II. that, while Abaelard labored to
prove Plato a Christian, he proved himself to be a pagan. Liberal as he was in
some of his doctrinal views, he was wholly at one with the Church in its
insistence upon the efficiency of the sacraments, especially baptism and the
Lord's Supper.

Because Abaelard stands outside
of the theological circle of his day, he will always be one of the most
interesting figures of the Middle Ages. His defect was in the lack of moral
power. The student often finds himself asking the question, whether his
statements were always the genuine expression of convictions. But for this lack
of moral force, he might have been the Tertullian of the Middle Ages, whom he
is not unlike in dash and original freshness of thought. The African Father, so
vigorous in moral power, the Latin Church excludes from the number of the
saints on account of his ecclesiastical dissent. Abaelard she cannot include on
account of moral weakness.1389 Had he
been willing to suffer and had he not retracted all the errors charged against
him, he might have been given a place among the martyrs of thought.1390 As it is, his misfortunes arouse our sympathy for human frailties
which are common; his theology and character do not awaken our admiration.

§ 101. Younger Contemporaries of Abaelard.

Literature:
For Gilbert (Gislebertus) of Poictiers. His Commentaries on Boethius, De
trinitate are in Migne, 64. 1266 sqq. T he De sex principiis, Migne,
188. 1250-1270. For his life: Gaufrid of
Auxerre, Migne, 185. 595 sqq.—Otto
of Freising, De gestis Frid., 50-57.—J. of Salisbury, Hist. pontif., VIII.—Poole, in Illustr. of the Hist. of
Med. Thought, pp. 167-200. Hefele,
V. 503-508, 520-524.—Neander-Deutsch,
St. Bernard, II. 130-144.

Among Abaelard's younger
contemporaries and pupils were Gilbert of Poictiers, John of Salisbury, and
Robert Pullen, theologians who were more or less influenced by Abaelard's
spirit of free inquiry. Peter the Lombard, d. 1164, also shows strong traces of
Abaelard's teaching, especially in his Christology.1391

Gilbert of Poictiers, 1070-1154,
is better known by his public trial than by his writings, or any permanent
contributions to theology. Born at Poictiers, he studied under Bernard of
Chartres, William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon, and Abaelard. He stood at the
head of the cathedral school in Chartres for ten years, and in 1137 began
teaching in Paris. In 1142 he was made bishop of Poictiers. His two principal
works are De sex principiis, an exposition of Aristotle's last six
categories, which Aristotle himself left unexplained, and a commentary on the
work on the Trinity, ascribed to Boethius. They occupy only a few pages in
print.

Gilbert's work on the Trinity
involved him in a trial for heresy, in which Bernard was again a leading actor.1392 The case was brought before the synods of Paris, 1147, and Rheims,
1148. According to Otto of Freising, Gilbert was a man of earnest purpose. It
was his dark and abstruse mode of statement and intense realism that exposed
him to the accusation of unorthodoxy.

Some of Gilbert's pupils were
ready to testify against him, but sufficient evidence of tritheism were not
forthcoming at Paris and the pope, who presided, adjourned the case to Rheims.
At Rheims, Bernard who had been appointed prosecutor offended some of the
cardinals by his methods of conducting the prosecution. Both Otto of Freising
and John of Salisbury1393state that a schism was threatened and only
averted by the good sense of pope Eugenius.

To the pope's question whether
Gilbert believed that the highest essence, by virtue of which, as he asserted,
each of the three persons of the Trinity was God, was itself God, Gilbert
replied in the negative.1394 Gilbert
won the assembly by his thorough acquaintance with the Fathers. The charge was
declared unproven and Gilbert was enjoined to correct the questionable
statements in the light of the fourth proposition brought in by Bernard. The
accused continued to administer his see till his death. Otto of Freising
concludes his account by saying, that either Bernard was deceived as to the
nature of Gilbert's teaching as David was deceived by Mephibosheth, 2 Sam. 9:19
sqq., or that Gilbert covered up his real meaning by an adroit use of words to
escape the judgment of the Church. With reference to his habit of confusing
wisdom with words Walter of St. Victor called Gilbert one of the four
labyrinths of France.

John of Salisbury, about 1115-1180,
was the chief literary figure and scholar among the Englishmen of the twelfth
century, and exhibits in his works the practical tendency of the later English
philosophy.1395 He was
born at Salisbury and of plebeian origin. He spent ten or twelve years in
"divers studies" on the Continent, sat at the feet of Abaelard on Mt.
Genevieve, 1136, and heard Gilbert of Poictiers, William of Conches, Robert
Pullen, and other renowned teachers. A full account of the years spent in study
is given in his Metalogicus. Returning to England, he stood in a
confidential relation to archbishop Theobald. At a later time he espoused
Becket's cause and was present in the cathedral when the archbishop was
murdered. He had urged the archbishop not to enter his church. In 1176 he was
made bishop of Chartres. He says he crossed the Alps no less than ten times on
ecclesiastical business.

By his reminiscences and
miscellanies, John contributed, as few men did, to our knowledge of the age in
which he lived. He had the instincts of a Humanist, and, had he lived several
centuries later, would probably have been in full sympathy with the
Renaissance. His chief works are the Metalogicus, the Polycraticus,
and the Historia pontificalis. The Polycraticus is a treatise on
the principles of government and philosophy, written for the purpose of drawing
attention away from the trifling disputes and occupations of the world to a
consideration of the Church and the proper uses of life.1396 He fortified his positions by quotations from the Scriptures and
classical writers, and shows that the Church is the true conservator of
morality and the defender of justice in the State. He was one of the best-read
men of his age in the classics.1397

In the Metalogicus, John
calls a halt to the casuistry of Scholasticism and declares that the reason is
apt to err as well as the senses. Dialectics had come to be used as an
exhibition of mental acumen, and men, like Adam du Petit Pont, made their
lectures as intricate and obscure as possible, so as to attract students by the
appearance of profundity. John declared that logic was a vain thing except as
an instrument, and by itself as useless as the "sword of Hercules in a
pygmy's hand." He emphasized the importance of knowledge that can be put
to use, and gave a long list of things about which a wise man may have doubts,
such as providence and human fortune, the origin of the soul, the origin of
motion, whether all sins are equal and equally to be punished. God, he affirmed,
is exalted above all that the mind can conceive, and surpasses our power of
ratiocination.1398

The Historia pontificalis is
an account of ecclesiastical matters falling under John's own observation,
extending from the council at Rheims, 1148, to the year 1152.

Peter the Lombard is the father
of systematic theology in the Catholic Church. He produced the most useful and
popular theological text-book of the Middle Ages, as Thomas Aquinas produced
the most complete theological system. In method, he belongs to the age of the
great theologians of the thirteenth century, when Scholasticism was at its
height. In point of time, he has his place in the twelfth century, with whose
theologians, Bernard, Abaelard, Gilbert, Hugo of St. Victor, and others, he was
personally acquainted. Peter was born at Novara, in Northern Italy, and died in
Paris about 1164.1399 After
studying in Bologna, he went to France and attended the school of St. Victor
and the cathedral school in Paris, and came under the influence of Abaelard. He
afterwards taught in Paris. Walter Map, describing his experiences in France,
calls him "the famous theologian." In 1159 he was made bishop of
Paris.

His monumental work, the Four
Books of Sentences, libri quatuor sententiarum, covers, in a systematic
way, the whole field of dogmatic theology, as John of Damascus had done four
hundred years before in his summary of the Orthodox Faith. It won for its
author the title, the Master of Sentences, magister sententiarum. Other
systems of theology under the name of sentences had preceded the
Lombard's treatise. Such a work was ascribed to Abaelard by St. Bernard.1400 This was probably a mistake. It is certain, however, that
Abaelard's scholars—Roland (afterwards Alexander III.), while he was professor
at Bologna, 1142, and Omnebene—produced such works and followed Abaelard's
threefold division of faith, charity, and the sacraments.1401 Of more importance were the treatises of Anselm of Laon, Robert
Pullen,1402and Hugo of St. Victor, who wrote before the
Lombard prepared his work. Robert Pullen, who died about 1147, was an
Englishman and one of the first teachers at Oxford, then went to Paris, where
he had John of Salisbury for one of his hearers about 1142, enjoyed the
friendship of St. Bernard, came into favor at Rome, and was appointed cardinal
by Coelestin II.

The Lombard's work is clear,
compact, and sententious, moderate and judicial in spirit, and little given to
the treatment of useless questions of casuistry. In spite of some attacks upon
its orthodoxy, it received wide recognition and was used for several centuries
as a text-book, as Calvin's Institutes, at a later period, was used in
the Protestant churches. Down to the sixteenth century, every candidate for the
degree of B. A. at Paris was obliged to pass an examination in it. Few books
have enjoyed the distinction of having had so many commentaries written upon
them. One hundred and sixty are said to be by Englishmen, and one hundred and
fifty-two by members of the order of St. Dominic. The greatest of the Schoolmen
lectured and wrote commentaries upon it, as Alexander Hales, Albertus Magnus,
Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Durandus, and Ockam.1403

Not uninfluenced by the method
pursued by Abaelard in the Sic et Non, the Lombard collated statements
from the Fathers and he set about making his compilation to relieve the student
from the task and toil of searching for himself in the Fathers.1404 Augustine furnished more than twice as many quotations as all the
other Fathers together.1405 The
Lombard went further than Abaelard and proposed to show the harmony existing
between the patristic statements. In the arrangement of his material and for
the material itself he drew largely upon Abaelard, Gratian, and Hugo of St.
Vector,1406without, however, quoting them by name. Upon Hugo
he drew for entire paragraphs.

The Sentences are divided
into four parts, treating of the triune God, created beings and sin, the
incarnation, the Christian virtues and the decalogue, and the sacraments with
some questions in eschatology. The author's method is to state the doctrine
taught by the Church, to confirm it from Scripture, then to adduce the opinions
of the Fathers and, if they seemed to be in conflict, to reconcile them. His
ultimate design was to lift up the light of truth in its candlestick, and he
assures us his labor had cost him much toil and sweat of the brow.1407

The Lombard's arguments for the
divine existence are chiefly cosmological. God's predestination of the elect is
the cause of good in them and is not based upon any foreseen goodness they may
have. Their number cannot be increased or diminished. On the other hand, God
does not take the initiation the condemnation of the lost. Their reprobation
follows as a consequence upon the evil in them which is foreseen.1408

In the second book, the Lombard
makes the famous statement which he quotes from Augustine, and which has often
been falsely ascribed as original to Matthew Henry, that the woman was not
taken from Adam's head, as if she were to rule over him or from his feet as if
she were to be his slave, but from his side that she might be his consort. By
the Fall man suffered injury as from a wound, vulneratio, not
deprivation of all virtue. Original sin is handed down through the medium of
the body and becomes operative upon the soul by the soul's contact with the
body. The root of sin is concupiscence, concupiscentia. The Lombard was
a creationist.1409 God knew
man would fall. Why He did not prevent it, is not known.

In his treatment of the
atonement, Peter denied that Christ's death was a price paid to the devil. It
is the manifestation of God's love, and by Christ's love on the cross, love is
enkindled within us. Here the Lombard approaches the view of Abaelard. He has nothing
to say in favor of Anselm's view that the death of Christ was a payment to the
divine honor.1410

In his treatment of the
sacraments, the Lombard commends immersion as the proper form of baptism,
triune or single.1411 Baptism
destroys the guilt of original sin. The Lord's Supper is a sacrifice, and the
elements are transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. Water is to be mixed
with the wine, the water signifying the people redeemed by Christ's passion.

It is remarkable that a work
which came into such general esteem, and whose statements are so carefully guarded
by references to Augustine, should have been attacked again and again as
heretical, as at the synod of Tours, 1163, and at the Third Lateran, 1179; but
at neither was any action taken. Again at the Fourth Lateran, 1215, Peter's
statement of the Trinity was attacked. Peter had said that the Father, Son, and
Spirit were "a certain highest being," and that the substance neither
begets nor is begotten, nor does it proceed from anything.1412 Joachim charged that he substituted a quaternity for the Trinity
and called him a heretic, but the council took another view and pronounced in
favor of Peter's orthodoxy. Walter of St. Victor went so far as to accuse the
author of the Sentences with Sabellianism, Arianism, and "novel
heresies."1413 In spite
of such charges no one can get as clear an idea of mediaeval theology in a
succinct form as in Peter Lombard unless it be in the Breviloquium of
Bonaventura.

The last and one of the clearest
of the Summists of the twelfth century was Alanus de Insulis, Alain of Lille,
who was born at Lille, Flanders, and died about 1202.1414 His works were much read, especially his allegorical poems, Anticlaudianus
and De planctu naturae.

In the Rules of Sacred
Theology Alanus gives one hundred and twenty-five brief expositions of
theological propositions. In the five books on the Catholic Faith,1415he considers the doctrine of
God, creation and redemption, the sacraments, and the last things. The Church
is defined as the congregation of the faithful confessing Christ and the
arsenal of the sacraments.1416 Alanus'
work, Against Heretics, has already been used in the chapters on the
Cathari and Waldenses.

Another name which may be introduced here is Walter of
St. Victor, who is chiefly known by his characterization of Abaelard, Gilbert
of Poictiers, Peter the Lombard, and the Lombard's pupil, Peter of Poictiers,
afterwards chancellor of the University of Paris, as the four labyrinths of
France. He likened their reasoning to the garrulity of frogs, — ranarum
garrulitas,—and declared that, as sophists, they had unsettled the faith by
their questions and counterquestions. Walter's work has never been printed. He
succeeded Richard as prior of the convent of St. Victor. He died about 1180.1417

Side by side with the scholastic
element in mediaeval theology was developed the mystical element. Mysticism
aims at the immediate personal communion of the soul with the Infinite Spirit,
through inward devotions and spiritual aspirations, by abstraction rather than
by logical analysis, by adoration rather than by argument, with the heart
rather than with the head, through the spiritual feelings rather than through
intellectual prowess, through the immediate contact of the soul with God rather
than through rites and ceremonies. The characteristic word to designate the
activity of the mystic is devotion; of the scholastic, speculation. Mysticism
looks less for God without and more for God within the breast. It relies upon
experience rather than upon definitions.1418 Mysticism is equally opposed to rationalism and to ritual
formalism.

In the Apostle John and also in
Paul we have the mystical element embodied. The centre of John's theology is
that God is love. The goal of the believer is to abide in Christ and to have
Christ abide in him. The true mystic has felt. He is no visionary nor a dabbler
in occultism. Nor is he a recluse. Neither the mystics of this period nor
Eckart and Tauler of a later period seclude themselves from the course of human
events and human society. Bernard and the theologians of St. Victor did not
lose themselves in the absorption of ecstatic exercises, though they sought
after complete and placid composure of soul under the influence of love for
Christ and the pure contemplation of spiritual things. "God," said
St. Bernard, "is more easily sought and found by prayer than by
disputation." "God is known," said both Bernard and Hugo of St.
Victor, "so far as He is loved." Dante placed Bernard still higher
than Thomas Aquinas, the master of scholastic thought, and was led by him
through prayer to the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity with which his Divine
Comedy closes.1419

Augustine furnished the chief
materials for the mystics of the Middle Ages as he did for the scholastics. It
was he who said, "Thou hast made us for thyself and the heart is restless
till it rests in Thee." For Aristotle, the mystics substituted Dionysius
the Areopagite, the Christian Neo-Platonist, whose works were made accessible
in Latin by Scotus Erigena.1420 The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Schoolmen,
Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura.

The Middle Ages took Rachel and
Leah, Mary and Martha as the representatives of the contemplative and the
active life, the conventual and the secular life, and also of the mystic and
scholastic methods. Through the entire two periods of seven years, says Peter
Damiani,1421Jacob was serving for Rachel. Every convert must
endure the fight of temptation, but all look forward to repose and rest in the
joy of supreme contemplation; that is, as it were, the embraces of the
beautiful Rachel. These two periods stand for the Old and New Testament, the
law and the grace of the Gospel. He who keeps the commandments of both at last
comes into the embraces of Rachel long desired.

Richard of St. Victor devotes a
whole treatise to the comparison between Rachel and Leah. Leah was the more
fertile, Rachel the more comely. Leah represented the discipline of virtue,
Rachel the doctrine of truth. Rachel stands for meditation, contemplation,
spiritual apprehension, and insight; Leah for weeping, lamentation, repining,
and grief. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. So reason, after the pangs
of ratiocination, dies in giving birth to religious devotion and ardor.1422

This comparison was taken from
Augustine, who said that Rachel stands for the joyous apprehension of the truth
and, for that reason, was said to have a good face and beautiful form.1423 St. Bernard spoke of the fellowship of the active and
contemplative life as two members of the same family, dwelling together as did
Mary and Martha.1424

The scholastic theology was
developed in connection with the school and the university, the mystic in
connection with the convent. Clairvaux and St. Victor near Paris were the
hearth-stones of mysticism. Within cloistral precincts were written the
passionate hymns of the Middle Ages, and the eucharistic hymns of Thomas
Aquinas are the utterances of the mystic and not of the Schoolman.

The leading mystical divines of this period were
Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, and Rupert of Deutz. Mystical in their
whole tendency were also Joachim of Flore, Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schönau,
who belong in a class by themselves.

The works of Bernard which
present his mystical theology are the Degrees of Humility and Pride, a
sermon addressed to the clergy, entitled Conversion, the treatise on Loving
God, his Sermons on the Canticles, and his hymns. The author's
intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is shown on almost every page. He has
all the books at his command and quotation follows quotation with great
rapidity. Bernard enjoyed the highest reputation among his contemporaries as an
expounder of the inner life, as his letters written in answer to questions
show. Harnack calls him the religious genius of the twelfth century, the leader
of his age, the greatest preacher Germany had ever heard. In matters of
religious contemplation he called him a new Augustine, Augustinus redivivus.1425

The practical instinct excluded
the speculative element from Bernard as worldly ambition excluded the mystical
element from Abaelard. Bernard had the warmest respect for the Apostle Paul and
greatly admired Augustine as "the mightiest hammer of the heretics"
and "the pillar of the Church."1426 Far more attractive is he as a devotional theologian, descanting
on the excellencies of love and repeating Paul's words. "Let all your
things be done in love," 1 Cor. 16:14, than as a champion of orthodoxy and
writing, "It is better that one perish than that unity perish."1427

Prayer and personal sanctity,
according to Bernard, are the ways to the knowledge of God, and not
disputation. The saint, not the disputant, comprehends God.1428 Humility and love are the fundamental ethical principles of
theology. The conventual life, with its vigils and fastings, is not an end but
a means to develop these two fundamental Christian virtues.1429 Every convent he regarded as a company of the perfect, collegium
perfectorum, but not in the sense that all the monks were perfect.1430

The treatise on Loving God
asserts that God will be known in the measure in which He is loved. Writing to
Cardinal Haimeric, who had inquired "why and how God is to be loved,"
Bernard replied. "The exciting cause of love to God, is God Himself. The
measure of love to God is to love God without measure.1431 The gifts of nature and the soul are adapted to awaken love. But
the gifts involved in the soul's relation to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
whom the unbeliever does not know, are inexpressibly more precious and call
upon man to exercise an infinite and measureless love, for God is infinite and
measureless. The soul is great in the proportion in which it loves God."1432

Love grows with our apprehension
of God's love. As the soul contemplates the cross it is itself pierced with the
sword of love, as when it is said in the Canticles, II. 5. "I am
sick from love." Love towards God has its reward, but love loves without
reference to reward. True love is sufficient unto itself. To be fully absorbed
by love is to be deified.1433 As the
drop of water dropped into wine seems to lose its color, and taste, and as the
iron held in the glowing flame loses its previous shape and becomes like the
flame, and as the air, transfused by the light of the sun, becomes itself like
the light, and seems to be as the sun itself, even so all feeling in the saint
is wholly transfused by God's will, and God becomes all and in all.

In Bernard's eighty-six Sermons
on the Song of Solomon, we have a continuous apostrophe to love, the love of
God and the soul's love to God. As sermons they stand out like the Petite
Carême of Massillon among the great collections of the French pulpit. Bernard
reached only the first verse of the third chapter. His exposition, which is
written in Latin, revels in the tropical imagery of this favorite book of the
Middle Ages. Everything is allegorized. The very words are exuberant
allegories. And yet there is not a single sensual or unchaste suggestion in all
the extended treatment. As for the historical and literal meaning, Bernard
rejects all suggestion of it as unworthy of Holy Scripture and worthy only of
the Jews, who have this veil before their faces.1434 The love of the Shulamite and her spouse is a figure of the love
between the Church and Christ, though sometimes the soul, and even the Virgin
Mary, is put in the place of the Shulamite. The kiss of SS. 1:2 is the Holy
Spirit whom the second person of the Trinity reveals.1435 The breasts of the bride, 4:5, are the goodness and longsuffering
which Christ feels and dispenses, Rom. 2:4. The Canticles are a song
commemorating the grace of holy affection and the sacrament of eternal
matrimony.1436 It is an
epithalamial hymn; no one can hear who does not love, for the language of love
is a barbarous tongue to him who does not love, even as Greek is to one who is
not a Greek.1437 Love
needs no other stimulus but itself. Love loves only to be loved again.

Rhapsodic expressions like these
welled up in exuberant abundance as Bernard spoke to his audiences at different
hours of the day in the convent of Clairvaux. They are marked by no progress of
thought. Aphoristic statement takes the place of logic. The same spiritual
experiences find expression over and over again. But the treatment is always
devout and full of unction, and proves the justice of the title, "the
honey-flowing doctor,"—doctor mellifluus — given to the fervid
preacher.

The mysticism of St. Bernard
centres in Christ. It is by contemplation of Him that the soul is filled with
knowledge and ecstasy. The goal which the soul aspires to is that Christ may
live in us, and our love to God become the all-controlling affection. Christ is
the pure lily of the valley whose brightness illuminates the mind. As the
yellow pollen of the lily shines through the white petals, so the gold of his
divinity shines through his humanity. Bethlehem and Calvary, the birth and
passion of Christ, controlled the preacher's thought. Christ crucified was the
sum of his philosophy.1438 The name
of Jesus is like oil which enlightens, nourishes, and soothes. It is light,
food, and medicine. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, and in the
heart, joy.1439

Bernard was removed from the pantheistic self-deletion
of Eckart and the imaginative extravagance of St. Theresa. From Madame Guyon
and the Quietists of the seventeenth century, he differed in not believing in a
state of pure love in the present life. Complete obedience to the law of love
is impossible here unless it be in the cases of some of the martyrs.1440 His practical tendencies and his common sense kept him from
yielding himself to a life of self-satisfied contemplation and commending it.
The union with God and Christ is like the fellowship of the disciples in the
primitive Church who were together with one heart and one soul, Acts 4:32. The
union is not by a confusion of natures, but by a concurrence of wills.1441

In Hugo of St. Victor, d. 1141,
and more fully in his pupil, Richard of St. Victor, d. 1173, the mystical
element is modified by a strong scholastic current. With Bernard mysticism is a
highly developed personal experience. With the Victorines it is brought within
the limits of careful definition and becomes a scientific system. Hugo and
Richard confined their activity to the convent, taking no part in the public
controversies of the age.1442

Hugo, the first of the great
German theologians, was born about 1097 in Saxony.1443 About 1115 he went to Paris in the company of an uncle and became
an inmate of St. Victor. He was a friend of St. Bernard. Hugo left behind him
voluminous writings. He was an independent and judicious thinker, and
influenced contemporary writers by whom he is quoted. His most important works
are on Learning, the Sacraments, a Summa,1444and a Commentary on the
Coelestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite. He wrote commentaries on
Romans, Ecclesiastes, and other books of the Bible, and also a treatise on what
would now be called Biblical Introduction.1445 He recognized a triple sense of Scripture, historical,
allegorical, and anagogical, and was inclined to lay more stress than was usual
in that period upon the historical sense. An illustration of these three senses
is given in the case of Job. Job belonged to the land of Uz, was rich, was
overtaken by misfortune, and sat upon the dunghill scraping his body. This is
the historical sense. Job, whose name means the suffering one, dolens,
signifies Christ who left his divine glory, entered into our misery, and sat
upon the dunghill of this world, sharing our weaknesses and sorrows. This is
the allegorical sense. Job signifies the penitent soul who makes in his memory
a dunghill of all his sins and does not cease to sit upon it, meditate, and
weep. This is the anagogical sense.

From Hugo dates the careful
treatment of the doctrine of the sacraments upon the basis of Augustine's
definition of a sacrament as a visible sign of an invisible grace. His views
are given in the chapter on the Sacramental System.

The mystical element is
prominent in all of Hugo's writings.1446 The soul has a threefold power of apprehension and vision, the eye
of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of contemplation. The faculty of
contemplation is concerned with divine things, but was lost in the fall when
also the eye of reason suffered injure, but the eye of the flesh remained
unimpaired. Redemptive grace restores the eye of contemplation. This faculty is
capable of three stages of activity: cogitatio, or the apprehension of
objects in their external forms; meditatio, the study of their inner
meaning and essence; and contemplatio, or the clear, unimpeded insight
into the truth and the vision of God. These three stages are likened unto a
fire of green fagots. When it is started and the flame and smoke are
intermingled so that the flame only now and then bursts out, we have cogitatio.
The fire burning into a flame, the smoke still ascending, represents meditatio.
The bright glowing flame, unmixed with smoke, represents contemplatio.
The carnal heart is the green wood from which the passion of concupiscence has
not yet been dried out.1447

In another place Hugo compares
the spirit, inflamed with desire and ascending to God, to a column of smoke
losing its denseness as it rises. Ascending above the vapors of concupiscence,
it is transfused with light from the face of the Lord and comes to behold Him.1448 When the heart is fully changed into the fire of love, we know
that God is all in all. Love possesses God and knows God. Love and vision are
simultaneous.

The five parts of the religious
life, according to Hugo, are reading, reflection, prayer, conduct, and
contemplation.1449 The word "love"
was not so frequently on Hugo's pen as it was on St. Bernard's. The words he
most often uses to carry his thought are contemplation and vision, and he has
much to say of the soul's rapture, excessus or raptus. The
beatitude, "The pure in heart shall see God," is his favorite
passage, which he quotes again and again to indicate the future beatific vision
and the vision to which even now the soul may arise. The first man in the state
of innocence lived in unbroken vision of God.

They who have the spirit of God,
have God. They see God. Because the eye has been illuminated, they see God as
He is, separate from all else and by Himself. It is the intellectual man that
partakes of God's bliss, and the more God is understood the more do we possess
Him. God made man a rational creature that he might understand and that by
understanding he might love, by loving possess, and by possessing enjoy.1450

More given to the dialectical
method and more allegorical in his treatment of Scripture than Hugo, was
Richard of St. Victor. Richard is fanciful where Hugo is judicious, extravagant
where Hugo is self-restrained, turgid where Hugo is calm.1451 But he is always stimulating. Of his writings many are extant, but
of his life little is known. He was a Scotchman, became subprior of St. Victor,
1162, and then prior. While he was at St. Victor, the convent was visited by Alexander
III, and Thomas á Becket. In his exegetical works on the Canticles, the
Apocalypse, and Ezekiel, Richard's exuberant fancy revels in allegorical
interpretations. As for the Canticles, they set forth the contemplative life as
Ecclesiastes sets forth the natural and Proverbs the moral life. Jacob
corresponds to the Canticles, for he saw the angels ascending and descending.
Abraham corresponds to the Proverbs and Isaac to Ecclesiastes.1452 The Canticles set forth the contemplative life, because in that
book the advent and sight of the Lord are desired.

In the department of dogmatics
Richard wrote Emmanuel, a treatise directed to the Jews,1453and a work on the Incarnation,
addressed to St. Bernard, 1454in which, following Augustine, he praised sin as a happy
misdemeanor,—felix culpa,—inasmuch as it brought about the incarnation
of the Redeemer.1455 His chief
theological work was on the Trinity. Here he starts out by deriving all
knowledge from experience, ratiocination, and faith. Dialectics are allowed
full sweep in the attempt to join knowledge and faith. Richard condemned the
pseudo-philosophers who leaned more on Aristotle than on Christ, and thought
more of being regarded discoverers of new things than of asserting established
truths.1456 Faith is
set forth as the essential prerequisite of Christian knowledge. It is its
starting-point and foundation.1457 The author proves the Trinity in the godhead from the idea of
love, which demands different persons and just three because two persons,
loving one another, will desire a third whom they shall love in common.

Richard's distinctively mystical
writings won for him the name of the great contemplator, magnus contemplator.
In the Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation or Benjamin the Less,
the prolonged comparison is made between Leah and Rachel to which reference has
already been made. The spiritual significance of their two nurses and their
children is brought down to Benjamin. Richard even uses the bold language that
Benjamin killed his mother that he might rise above natural reason.1458

In Benjamin the Greater,
or the Grace of Contemplation, we have a discussion of the soul's processes, as
the soul rises "through self and above self" to the supernal vision
of God. Richard insists upon the soul's purification of itself from all sin as
the condition of knowing God. The heart must be imbued with virtues, which
Richard sets forth, before it can rise to the highest things, and he who would
attempt to ascend to the height of knowledge must make it his first and chief
study to know himself perfectly.1459

Richard repeats Hugo's classification
of cogitatio, meditatio, and contemplatio. Contemplation
is the mind's free, clear, and admiring vision of the wonders of divine wisdom.1460 It includes six stages, the last of them being "contemplation
above and aside from reason," whereby the mysteries of the Trinity are
apprehended. In transgressing the limits of itself, the soul may pass into a
state of ecstasy, seeing visions, enjoying sublimated worship and inexpressible
sweetness of experience. This is immediate communion with God. The third
heaven, into which Paul was rapt, is above reason and to be reached only by a
rapturous transport of the mind—per mentis excessum. It is "above
reason and aside from reason."1461 Love is the impelling motive in the entire process of contemplation
and "contemplation is a mountain which rises above all worldly
philosophy." Aristotle did not find out any such thing, nor did Plato, nor
did any of the company of the philosophers.1462

Richard magnifies the Scriptures
and makes them the test of spiritual states. Everything is to be looked upon
with suspicion which does not conform to the letter of Scripture.1463

The leading ideas of these two
stimulating teachers are that we must believe and love and sanctify ourselves
in order that the soul may reach the ecstasy and composure of contemplation or
the knowledge of God. The Scriptures are the supreme guide and the soul by
contemplation reaches a spiritual state which the intellect and argumentation
could ever bring it to.

Rupert of Deutz.—Among the mystics of the
twelfth century no mean place belongs to Rupert of Deutz.1464 A German by nationality, he was made abbot of the Benedictine
convent of Deutz near Cologne about 1120 and died 1136. He came into conflict
with Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux through a report which represented
them as teaching that God had decreed evil, and that, in sinning, Adam had
followed God's will. Rupert answered the errors in two works on the Will of God
and the Omnipotence of God. He even went to France to contend with these
two renowned teachers.1465 Anselm of
Laon he found on his death-bed. With William he held an open disputation.

Rupert's chief merit is in the
department of exegesis. He was the most voluminous biblical commentator of his
time. He magnified the Scriptures. In one consecutive volume he commented on
the books of the Old Testament from Genesis to Chronicles, on the four Major
Prophets, and the four evangelists.1466 The commentary on Genesis alone occupies nearly four hundred
columns in Migne's edition. Among his other exegetical works were commentaries
on the Gospel and Revelation of St. John, the Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, and
especially the Canticles and Matthew. In these works he follows the text
conscientiously and laboriously, verse by verse. The Canticles Rupert regarded
as a song in honor of the Virgin Mary, but he set himself against the doctrine
that she was conceived without sin. The commentary opens with an interpretation
of Cant. 1:2, thus: " 'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.' What
is this exclamation so great, so sudden?
Of blessed Mary, the inundation of joy, the force of love, the torrent
of pleasure have filled thee full and wholly intoxicated thee and thou hast
felt what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man,
and thou hast said, 'Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth' for thou didst
say to the angel 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be unto me according
to thy word.' What was that word? What
did he say to thee? 'Thou hast found
grace,' he said, 'with the Lord. Behold thou shalt conceive and bare a son.'...
Was not this the word of the angel, the word and promise of the kiss of the
Lord's mouth ready to be given?" etc.1467

Rupert also has a place in the history of the doctrine
of the Lord's Supper, and it is an open question whether or not he substituted
the doctrine of impanation for the doctrine of transubstantiation.1468

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
The material has been carefully compared and corrected according to the
Eerdmans reproduction of the 1907 edition by Charles Scribner's sons, with
emendations by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.

1312 1. Milman, Hist. of Lat. Christianity, VIII. 257, is
certainly unjust when he says: "With all their search into the
unfathomable, the Schoolmen have fathomed nothing; with all their vast logical
apparatus, they have proved nothing to the satisfaction of the inquisitive
mind." One has only to think of the ontological argument of Anselm and the
cosmological arguments of Thomas Aquinas and the statements wrought out on the
satisfaction of Christ to feel that the statement is not true.

1314 The council of Paris, 1209, forbade the use of his Natural
Philosophy. Gregory IX., 1231, condemned the Physics, but in 1254
the University of Paris prescribed the number of hours to be devoted to the
explanation of Aristotle's works.

1324 Otto of Freising, de gest. Frid., I. 47, spoke of him as
the originator of Nominalism in that age, qui primus nostris temporibus in logica
sententiam vocum instituit. According to John of Salisbury, nominalism almost wholly vanished with
Roscellinus, Metalog., II. 17.

1338 Thomas Aquinas said that, even if the name of God means illud quo majus cogitari non
potest, yet it
would not be possible to proceed to the affirmation of God's real existence,
because the atheist denies that there is aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest,
Summa, I. ii. 2. Hegel replied to Kant that the Begriff
an und für sich selbst enthält das Sein also eine Bestimmtheit. Professor E. Caird, in an
article, Anselm's Argument for the Being of God (Journal of Theolog. Studies,
1900, pp. 23-39), sums up his objection to Anselm's argument by saying,
"It is the scholastic distortion of an idea which was first presented in
the Platonic philosophy," etc. Ritschl, Justification and
Reconciliation, p. 217, makes the same objection when he says Anselm
confuses reality and thought.

1340 A careful statement of the history of the ontological argument was
given by Köstlin, D. Beweise fürs Dasein Gottes, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1875,
1876. Also Ruze, D. ontol. Gottesbeweis seit Anselm, Halle, 1882.

1341 Quamvis homo juste a diabolo torqueretur, ipse tamen illum
injuste torquebat, etc., I. 7; Migne, 158. 367 sq. Again Anselm takes up
this point, II. 20; p. 427 sq., and says it was not necessary for God to
descend to conquer the devil or to proceed judicially against him in order to
liberate man. Nothing else did God owe the devil but punishment, and nothing
else did man owe the devil but to treat him as he had been treated, that is, to
conquer him as man himself had been conquered. All that was demanded by the
devil, man owed to God and not to the devil.

1345 II. 22; Migne, 158. 431. It is a matter of dispute how far Anselm
drew upon the doctrine of penance which had been handed down from the Fathers
or from the German law with its Wehrgeld, or debt of honor; or whether
he drew upon them at all. It is probable that the Church's penitential system
had affected the chivalric idea of honor. Harnack, Dogmengesch., III. 252 sq., and Ritschl, Justification,
etc., p. 263, make the objection against Anselm's argument that it was based
upon an "idea of God's justice which implies an equality in private rights
between God and man."

1346 Harnack gives prolonged attention to Anselm's argument (Dogmengesch., III. 341-358) and, in specifying
its merits and defects, declares that the defects largely outweigh the merits.
Anselm's theory is not at all to be adopted, die Theorie
ist völlig unannehmbar. It would not be necessary, Harnack says, to waste many words over the
defects if it were not that the theology of the present day is stuck in
traditionalism and neglects all the canons of Gospel, ethics, logic, and
culture. He declares it to be a fearful thought that God may not forgive from
pure love, but had to have his honor appeased by sacrfice. Anselm's argument
taken by itself does not justify such severe criticism, and, if his other
writings and his own character be taken into account, he will be absolved from
the implied charges.

1349 Rule, I. 48, describes from personal observation the ancient and
dizzy bridge, le Pont de l'Aël, over a torrent near Aosta, which, as he says,
Anselm in making his description may have had in mind.

1351 The later Schoolmen did not lean back upon Anselm's theology as we
might have expected them to do. He was, however, often quoted, as by Thomas
Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, e.g., Summa, I. 3, 13, etc., Borgnet's ed.,
XXXI. 60<cbr>, 69</cbr>, 326.

1358 A letter is preserved written by Abaelard to his son. It indicates
affection. The father urges him to study the Scriptures. An Astralabius is
mentioned as belonging to the chapter of Nantes in 1150. Hausrath, p. 173,
conjectures he was Abaelard's son.

1361 Deutsch, p. 35. So war Abaelard Mönch geworden,
nicht von innerem Verlangen getrieben, etc. His relations with Heloise made freedom in his
position as a public teacher in the open for the time impossible.

1363 Abaelard closes his autobiography by declaring that like another
Cain he was dragged about the earth, a fugitive and vagabond, but also by
quoting passages upon the providence of God as that all things work together
for good to them that love Him.

1364 Ep. Bernardi, 326; Migne, 132. 531 sqq. William sent
to Bernard Abaelard's Theologia and
other works to make good his charges. He feared Abaelard would become "a
dragon" whom no one could destroy. Kutter, in his Wilhelm von
St. Thierry,
pp. 34, 36, 43, 48, insists, as against Deutsch, that William was the exciting
originator of the trial of Abaelard, which was soon to follow, and that Bernard
preferred silence and peace to conflict, and was amused to action by William's
appeal.

1366 Bernard's biographer, Gaufrid, states that Abaelard promised
amendment. No reference was made to such a promise in the charges at Sens, an
omission difficult to understand if the promise was really made. See Remusat,
I. 172, and Poole, p. 163.

1368 This preliminary meeting rests upon the testimony of Berengar and
upon a passage in John of Salisbury, Hist. Pontif., chap. VIII. 9. John,
in describing the trial of Gilbert of Poictiers, says Bernard wanted to have
Gilbert's case prejudged in a preliminary sitting and by the same method he had
resorted to in the case of Abaelard, —arte sim ili magistrum Petrum agressus erat. Berengar's defence of Abaelard
descends to passionate invective. Migne, 178. 1858 sqq. Berengar represents the
bishops and Bernard as being heated with wine at this preliminary conference,
when they decided against Abaelard. The details of his account and his charges
against Bernard are altogether out of accord with his character as it is
otherwise known to us. Deutsch (Neander's St. Bernard, II. 1 sqq.)
cannot free Bernard from unfairness in the part he took at this conference, as
Vacandard does.

1369 The statement is not inconsistent with the representation of Otto
of Freising, a disinterested reporter, who gives as reason for refusing to make
an argument that he feared a popular tumult.

1371 Ep., 331; Migne, 182. 537. There are nine of these letters
to the cardinals, 188, 192, 193, 331-335, 338. The longest letter was the one
addressed to the pope, 190; Migne, 182. 1051-1071. The great vehemence of these
letters have exposed Bernard in some quarters to unmitigated condemnation. From
the standpoint of Christian moderation and charity they are difficult to
understand and cannot be justified. Hausrath, p. 248, etc., represents him as der
werltkluge Abt von Clairvaux, resorting to all the arts of diplomacy to secure a
verdict against Abaelard. M'Cabe, in a very readable chapter, pp. 322-354,
takes the same view. Without excusing him, it must be remembered in passing
judgment that heresy was regarded with horror in that age. Bernard, no doubt,
also shrank from Abaelard as a man who sought applause rather than the
advancement of the Church. Morison, p. 302, speaks "of a horror of great
darkness falling upon Bernard," when he recognized the dangers of a new
era. Neander, St. Bernard, II. 3, says that no one can question that
Bernard's zeal proceeded from a pure Christian purpose, but that he used the
weapons of hatred under the mask of holy love.

1373 The Story of Misfortunes was written while he was abbot of
St. Gildas. It has been compared to the Confessions of Augustine. But no
comparison could more sadly offend against truth. Abaelard revealed his inward
states to gain a worldly end. He wanted to draw attention to himself and prepare
the way for a new career. His letters to Heloise are not so much to assure her
of his orthodoxy as to make that impression upon the Church authorities. This
is the position taken by Deutsch, pp. 43 sqq., Hausrath, 275 sqq., and Nitsch,
art. Abaelard in Herzog.

1374 The French writers designate Abaelard's theory Conceptualism, and
hold that he substituted conceptus for
voces. Deutsch, p. 105. Walter Map,
writing in the second half of the twelfth century, speaks of Abaelard as
"the leader of the Nominalists, princeps nominalismi, who sinned more in dialectics than he did in
his treatment of Scripture." Wright's ed., I. 24, p. 41.

1383 Catholica
quippe est fides, id est universalis quae ita omnibus necessaria est ut nemo
discretus absque ea salvari possit, Migne, p. 986. In view of such a statement, Poole's
remark has much in its favor, "it was not really Abaelard's results that
formed the strength of the indictment against him, but the method by which he
reached them," p. 153.

1384 They are found in his Com. on Romans, as well as in his Introd.
ad Theol. and his Sermons, V., X., XII.

1385 They are set forth more particularly in the ethical treatise Scito te ipsum and the Com. on Romans,
especially in an excursus on original sin, appended to chap. V., Migne, pp.
866-874.

1389 Hausrath, pp. 293 sqq., assigns to Abaelard a place in the front
rank of such martyrs. He justifies him for declining to stand by his
conclusions in these words: "It would be unfair to demand that a scholar,
who was under the pressure of such circumstances (that is mediaeval
ecclesiasticism should have the courage of a farm hand, or carry his views to
their logical conclusion like a statesman."

1390 Abaelard left admiring pupils, some of whom, like Omnibene, wrote
books of Sentences based upon their teacher's Theology, and
followed his threefold division of faith, the Sacraments, and love. See
Denifle, Archiv, pp, 613 sqq.

1391 Denifle includes the Lombard in the theological school of
Abaelard. See his Abaelard's Sentenzen und d. Bearbeitungen
seiner Theologie,
Archiv, 1885, pp. 613-624.

1392 Neander-Deutsch, St. Bernard, II. 131. Poole, p. 181, calls
Gilbert's exposition of the Trinity "one of the subtlest and most
elaborate contributions to theological metaphysics the Middle Ages
produced."

1393 Hist. pontif., VIII.; Migne, pp. 522 sqq. One of the
accusers was Adam du Petit Pont, an Englishman, afterwards bishop of St. Asaph.
He got his name from the school he set up on a little bridge connecting Paris
with the Latin quarter. Schaarschmidt, p. 13.

1395 Stephens calls him "by far the most distinguished English
scholar of his century."Hist. of the Engl. Ch., pp. 320 sqq.

1396 Schaarschmidt calls it "the first great theory of the state
in the literature of the Middle Ages." In view of the variety of its
contents, Poole, p. 218, says that "it is to some extent an encyclopaedia
of the cultivated thought of the middle of the twelfth century."

1397 Poole says, "No writer of his age can be placed beside him in
the extent and depth of his classical reading."Dict. of Natl. Biog.,
XXIX. 441. Schaarschmidt speaks of his marvellous acquaintance with the
classics—eine
staunenswerthe Vertrautheit.

1399 This is the date given on an ancient epitaph in Paris, but the
date is made uncertain by the appointment of a bishop of Paris as the Lombard's
successor, 1160. This would seem to indicate his death occurred at that time
unless he was deposed on the charge of simony, of which, as Walter of St.
Victor says, he was guilty. Migne, 199. 1140.

1400 Liber
quem dicunt sententarium, Ep., 188; Migne, 182. 668. Walter of St. Victor declares it to
have been by Abaelard's hand or taken from his works, aut ex libris ejus excerptus. See Deutsch, P. Abaelard
excursus.

1401 Denifle, Archiv, 1885, learnedly establishes the relation
of these works to Abaelard. They exist in MSS. at Nürnberg, Munich, etc.
Omnebene expressly declared his work to be a compilatlon taken from different
sources.

1403 The Jesuit Possevin gives a list of 246 commentaries in print. See
Wetzer-Welte, IX. 1921, which speaks of the number of commentaries as unzaelig, "without number."
Hergenröther (Gesch. II. 516) speaks of them in the same way as zahllos. The first commentary,
according to Werner (Thom. von Aquino, I. 314), was by William of
Seignelay, teacher in Paris and later bishop of Paris.

1405 Baltzer, pp. 2-5, gives the results of a careful study. Augustine
furnishes 1000 quotations. Hilary comes next, being quoted 86 times. Baltzer's
book is a laborious comparison of every paragraph of the Lombard with the
Fathers and his predecessors among the Schoolmen, especially Abaelard and Hugo
of St. Victor.

1406 Denifle (Archiv, pp. 621 sqq.) is authority for the
statement that he also quotes from Gandulf's Sentences which still
remain in MS. at Turin.

1410 Mors
nos justificat, dum per eam caritas excitatur in cordibus nostris, III. 19; Migne, p. 285. John
of Cornwall, his pupil, expressly says that the Bombard learned his view of the
atonement from Abaelard and often had Abaelard's Theologia in his hands, Migne, 199. 1052.
See Denifle, pp. 616 sqq. Baltzer, pp. 96 sqq., goes so far as to say that his
silence is to be interpreted as a denial of the Anselmic theory.

1413 From time to time questionable articles continued to be cited from
the Lombard. In the middle of the thirteenth century the number of such articles
at variance with the doctrine of the Church was given as eight. The doctors of
Paris increased the number. Eymeric wrote a treatise on twenty-two such
heretical statements. A list of fifteen are given at the close of Peter's Sentences.
Migne, 451-454.

1414 He is probably a different man from Alanus, archbishop of Auxerre,
with whom he has often been identified, and who spent the last twenty years of
his life at Clairvaux and wrote a life of St. Bernard. Migne, 186. 470-523. See
Deutsch, Alanus, Herzog, I. 283 sqq. Hergenröther-Kirsch frequently quotes
Alanus.

1416 Congregatio
fidelium confitentium Christum, et sacramentorum subsidium, Migne, p. 613. Under the title
liber
sententiarum,
Migne, 229-264, he wrote also on the Lord's birth, John the Baptist, and Mary.

1417 Walter speaks of the four labyrinths as "treating with
scholastic levity the mysteries of the Trinity and the incarnation and vomiting
out many heresies." Planck gave an analysis of Walter's work in Studien
und Kritiken,
1844, pp. 823 sqq. Bulaeus, in Hist. universitatum, vol. II. 402, 629,
gives extracts, which are reprinted in Migne, 199, pp. 1127 sqq. Denifle also
gives quotations, Archiv, etc., 1886, pp. 404 sqq.

1418 Harnack, Dogmengesch., III. 314 sqq., 373 sqq.,
turns to ridicule the alleged difference between scholasticism and mysticism.
With the emotional or quietistic type of religion, die
Pektoraltheologie, the cardiac theology, as the Germans call it, he has little sympathy.
Piety, he says, is the starting-point of both and full knowledge their goal. He
makes the brusque statement, p. 318, that "a mystic who does not become a
Roman Catholic, is a dilettante." Ritschl had said before that there is
"no normal mysticism except in connection with the hermit life. The love
for it, widely prevalent among evangelical Christians, is dilettanteism."Pietismus,
II. 12. Harnack, however, is willing to allow a distinction in the terms and to
speak of scholasticism when the relation of God to the universe is thought of
and of mysticism when we have in mind the union of the soul with God.

1419 Paradiso, XXXI. 130, XXXIII. 49, etc. Dr. Philip Schaff
said, Lit. and Poetry, p. 232, "Bernard defended orthodox mysticism
and the theology of the heart against speculative rationalism and the theology
of the intellect in contrast with Peter Abaelard."

1441 Unitas
quam facit non confusio naturarum, sed voluntatum consensio. Serm. in Cant., LXXI. 7;
Migne, 183. 1124. Harnack, whose treatment of St. Bernard is one of the most
stirring chapters in his Hist. of Doctrine, nevertheless says unjustly III.
304, that Bernard's mysticism naturally led to Pantheism. In Bernard himself
there is no trace of Pantheism. See Ries, pp. 190 sq.

1442 St. Victor, the convent which William of Champeaux, Hugo, and
Richard made famous, had its filial houses not only in France but also in
Ireland. With the French Revolution the convent and its grounds disappeared. Two
streets of Paris, the Rue Guy de la Brosse and the Rue de Jussieu, were driven
through them. See Wetzer-Welte, St. Victor, XII. 914 sqq.

1443 The argument in favor of Saxony is well stated by Preger, Deutsche
Mystik, I. 227
sqq. So Zöckler in Herzog, and the art. on Hugo, in Wetzer-Welte.

1444 Summa
Sententiarum,
Migne, 176. 42-172. This work has been denied to Hugo by Denifle on
insufficient grounds. Hugo opens the work with a treatment of the three
cardinal virtues, faith, hope, and love, and proceeds to the discussion of the
Trinity, creation, the five sacraments, and marriage.

1445 He discusses the senses of Scripture, the number of the books, the
apocrypha, the translation, the historical difficulties of Scripture, etc. See
Migne, 175. 9-28. The same topics are treated in his treatise on Learning.
Migne, 176. 778-811.

1446 Among his mysticalwritings are de arca Noe morali, Migne, 176. 619-680; de arca mystica, Migne, 176. 681-703; de vanitate mundi. Noah's ark is symbolical of
the spiritual house and Christ is the "Captain, the supreme Noah."
The wood, windows, and other parts of the ark are all spiritualized. In the
second treatise the ark represents the cross.

1464 A fall edition of his works is given by Migne, vols. 167-170. See
Bach and Schwane. Also Rocholl, Rupert von Deutz. Beitrag
zur Gesch. der Kirche im 12ten Jahrh., Gütersloh, 1886.

1465 Rupert gives an account of his journey to France to meet William
and Anselm in disputation in his De regula Benedicti, I. 1; Migne, 170.
482 sq.

1466 The name of the work is De operibus sanctae trinitatis Migne, 167. 199-1827. The first
two parts represent the work of the Father and the Son and the third the work
of the Holy Spirit, pp. 1571-1827.